Chris Jones has been rewarded for his rebuilding job.
Saskatchewan Roughriders president and CEO Craig Reynolds announced Tuesday that Jones — the CFL team’s vice-president of football operations, general manager and head coach — has signed a one-year contract extension that will keep him with the Roughriders through the 2019 season.
As a result, Jones will get to continue the process he started in December of 2015 when he initially joined the Roughriders.
“We’ve still got work left to do, so it’s good that we’re getting an opportunity to make an attempt to finish what we started,” said the 50-year-old product of South Pittsburg, Tenn.
“Nobody is over the last game yet, so it’s, ‘What can we all do a little bit better?’ If we all do something a little bit better, next year we host a playoff game instead of having to go on the road to play playoff games.”
Jones guided the Roughriders to a 10-8-0 regular-season record in 2017 — a five-win improvement over the previous season.
Saskatchewan finished fourth in the West Division and became the 10th team from the West since the crossover format was introduced in 1996 to compete in the East playoffs. The Roughriders beat the Ottawa Redblacks 31-20 in the East semifinal, but fell 25-21 to the Toronto Argonauts in the division final.
Toronto went on to beat the Calgary Stampeders 27-24 in the Grey Cup game.
The Roughriders’ loss to the Argos still eats at Jones.
“Every day,” he said. “Every time somebody says, ‘Hey! Good year,’ you don’t really say what you want to say. You play great defence the whole friggin’ night and you can’t get them off (the field on) that last drive.”
Reynolds said the decision to give Jones a contract extension was “a natural.” The two men discussed the idea during the season, put their talks on hold until the campaign ended and then quickly came to an agreement.
“In pro sports, there are some risks when you have one year left on your deal — and Chris and I talked about that,” Reynolds said when asked about the timing of the extension. “You certainly don’t want your senior football leaders making short-sighted decisions. Not that Chris would do that, but there is some risk there.
“There has been some real positive progression from a team perspective, and continuity is important. When you look at successful football teams, they generally have good football people running them and they have some continuity. That’s what we’re trying to build here, so I think it was important to extend Chris and allow him an opportunity to have a four-year run at it.”
Jones was hired in December of 2015, shortly after guiding the Edmonton Eskimos to the Grey Cup title.
He spent two seasons as Edmonton’s head coach, leading the Eskimos to a 26-10-0 regular-season record and berths in back-to-back West Division finals. He was a finalist for the CFL’s coach-of-the-year award following both of those campaigns.
Given control of the Roughriders’ football operations, Jones guided the team to a 5-13-0 record in 2016. It was the first time in his CFL coaching career that he missed the playoffs.
One year later, he led Saskatchewan to the East Division final.
Instead of waiting until the final year of his contract to sign an extension, Jones agreed to the deal now.
“When we came here, Craig said he wanted something that was sustainable,” Jones said. “Our board evidently feels that we did enough good things to try to make this thing sustainable and do it more than just next year.”
As a result, Jones gets to continue to try to build a winning team in front of a rabid fan base in a new facility.
“This is what we wanted,” he said of working in Rider Nation. “People are talking about it at the coffee shop. They’re talking about it at dinner. It’s what matters. One of the reasons that we came here was for that experience.”
Jones began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Tennessee Tech University in 1995 and spent seven years in the NCAA before moving to the CFL in 2002. That year, he joined the Montreal Alouettes as their defensive line coach.
In 2003, he was named the Als’ defensive co-ordinator and held that title for five seasons. In 2008, he joined the Stampeders, with whom he spent four seasons as defensive co-ordinator and two as assistant director of player personnel.
In 2012, he joined the Argonauts and spent two seasons as their defensive co-ordinator and assistant general manager. In 2014, he left the Argos to become Edmonton’s head coach.
In 16 seasons as a CFL coach, Jones has coached in 13 division finals and seven Grey Cup games, and has won four Grey Cup rings.
The Roughriders also announced that Jeremy O’Day, John Murphy and Mike Davis have agreed to extensions that will keep them with the team through the 2019 campaign.
O’Day is entering his third season as Saskatchewan’s assistant vice-president of football operations and administration. He moved into the club’s front office in 2011 after spending 12 seasons as a Roughriders offensive lineman.
Murphy, the Roughriders’ assistant vice-president of football operations and player personnel, also is heading into his third season in Saskatchewan’s front office. It will be his 13th year in the CFL after stints in Calgary and Winnipeg.
Davis, who joined the Roughriders in September of 2016, returns as the team’s manager of football administration.
Reynolds noted the organization didn’t meet its own expectations in 2015 or 2016, so he too felt the pressure to deliver results. Now, with Jones and his front-office personnel conceivably in place for two more seasons, Reynolds is feeling more comfortable.
“I always bought into the vision and how Chris was going about building this team and you could see the progression,” Reynolds said. “I could see the progression at the end of 2016 where it gave me a lot of hope and a lot of faith that Chris was on to something and we were going to build something here. You could see that play out in ’17.”
