Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach-GM Chris Jones paid tribute to his mentor Wednesday.
Appearing on CKRM’s SportsCage with Rod Pedersen, Jones remembered legendary CFL head coach Don Matthews — the man who gave Jones his first job in the league in 2002.
Matthews died Wednesday at the age of 77.
“He’s a good dude, man, and he taught me a whole lot,” Jones told Pedersen. “I owe him the world.”
In 2002, Matthews — then the head coach of the Montreal Alouettes — hired Jones to be the Als’ defensive line coach. The two men were co-workers until Matthews stepped down as Montreal’s head coach in 2006.
Jones told Pedersen that Matthews — a noted defensive coach — changed the way the CFL game is played.
“He looked outside the box,” Jones said. “If you think something’s black, to him, it’s white. He looked at things from a different perspective. He made his own rules and that’s the way he lived and died.”
Jones remembered a game in which the Alouettes had the B.C. Lions backed up to their one-yard line late in the fourth quarter.
Rather than playing conservatively, Matthews called for a halfback blitz. The Lions had the right play called — and scored a 109-yard touchdown.
“We ended up losing the game, but that taught me right there that you have a philosophy and you hold to your philosophy,” Jones told Pedersen. “You don’t ever let anybody dictate how you do anything. You have your philosophy and you do it.”
Several of the coaches on Jones’ staff in Saskatchewan played for or coached with Matthews during his career. Jones told Pedersen that Matthews was tough on his assistants, but “it taught you how to be a coach.”
“We learned so much from him,” said Jones, who noted he called one of Matthews’ favourite defences on the first play of Saskatchewan’s pre-season game against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Saturday. “He’s still in the game, there’s no doubt about it, and he always will be.”
Matthews started his CFL coaching career as an assistant with the Edmonton Eskimos in 1977. His first head-coaching job was with B.C. in 1983.
He was hired by Saskatchewan after John Gregory was fired early in the 1991 season. Matthews guided the Roughriders to a 5-6-0 record in ’91, a 9-9-0 mark in ’92 and an 11-7-0 record in ’93. He resigned after that season to take over Baltimore’s expansion CFL franchise in 1994.
As a head coach, Matthews compiled a career record of 213-132-1, was named the CFL’s coach of the year five times and won five Grey Cups. He was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2011.
