Will the Ottawa Redblacks' new offensive coaches lead the team to sophomore success with Henry Burris, or was the QB part of the problem?

One of the more challenging evaluations in football is determining what percentage of a team's success or failure is thanks to its players and what part is due to its coaching staff. Good players can look bad with a scheme that doesn't complement their abilities, but even a good scheme can fail if it doesn't have the correct players. The expansion Ottawa Redblacks unquestionably struggled on offence in 2014, scoring a league-low 15.4 points per game, and their offseason decisions appear to indicate that they believe the problem was coaching; they've brought back quarterback Henry Burris (but under a reconfigured contract that will give them more salary cap space in 2015), but fired offensive coordinator Mike Gibson, replaced him with Jason Maas and have since added Bryan Chiu as their offensive line coach. There may be some personnel changes to come at other positions, but the decision to stick with Burris while changing the cast of coaches suggests the Redblacks believe their offensive struggles in 2014 weren't his fault. Is that a good assumption on their part?

Ottawa certainly didn't score a lot of points with Burris at the controls in 2014, but there are reasons to think that wasn't all about him. On the year, he threw for 3,728 yards (fourth in the league) with a decent 60.9 per cent completion percentage. His interceptions were a bigger issue (he had 14 against just 11 touchdowns), but part of that was thanks to an inexperienced receiving corps, some struggles on the offensive line, and, perhaps most crucially, issues with the offensive scheme and playcalling. Gibson's offence seemed to involve a lot of deep throws, which occasionally led to success, but were a high-risk proposition. Maas comes in after spending the last three seasons as a receivers coach with the Toronto Argonauts, so he's very familiar with Toronto head coach Scott Milanovich's short-pass-focused, high-percentage offensive scheme. That's a scheme similar to the one Burris ran very successfully with Hamilton in 2013, where he threw for 4,925 yards with a 65.8 per cent completion rate and 24 touchdowns against 19 interceptions. (Chiu is also familiar with the blocking schemes needed for success in this system, as he played in Montreal when Milanovich was the offensive coordinator there and then coached with the Argos under Milanovich last year.) If Maas elects to bring in a scheme based around that West Coast style, there are good reasons to believe Burris might find success in it.

However, some will definitely be wondering if Burris was part of the problem himself, especially given his age. He's 39 now, and will be 40 by the time the 2015 season rolls around, an age at which very few CFL quarterbacks have found success. Not all of the interceptions and red-zone inefficiencies the Redblacks showed off in 2014 can be blamed on Gibson, either; some of the picks in particular definitely came from poor decision-making, not poor playcalling, and illustrated Burris' "Bad Hank" moments. While a new system could appeal more to his strengths, there's also a chance that it may not solve Ottawa's offensive issues.

In the end, the smartest approach for Ottawa may be upgrading the rest of the offensive personnel and keeping Burris as the starter for now, but on a short leash. General manager Marcel Desjardins has a lot of work to do on the talent acquisition side, particularly at receiver and on the offensive line. If those areas improve, the Redblacks may be better on offence regardless of who their quarterback is. Burris seems like the most likely starter at the beginning of this next season, and that could work out very well if he adapts to Maas' scheme and plays like we saw in Hamilton the last couple of years. If Burris gets off to a slow start, though, it may not have been the coach who was the problem this year.