June 14, 2018

Notebook: Chris Jones sticks to his guns

Chris Jones finally spilled the beans.

After a week of questions about who would start for the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders on Friday against the Toronto Argonauts, Jones caved.

“Zack will start for us on the defensive line tomorrow night,” the Roughriders’ head coach and general manager told a media conference Thursday at Mosaic Stadium.

OK, so he was talking about defensive tackle Zack Evans, not quarterback Zach Collaros. Just as he has done all week, Jones declined to say whether Collaros or Brandon Bridge would start against the Argos (7 p.m., CKRM, TSN).

“We’ll see,” Jones replied when asked who would get the call.

Jones has said since acquiring Collaros from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Jan. 3 that a competition would determine the Roughriders’ starting quarterback in 2018. To that end, Collaros and Bridge went head to head through training camp and during the past week of practice.

Collaros worked primarily with the starting offence this week, but Jones still wouldn’t declare him the starter.

“You’ve got two good guys who have played a lot of football and they’ve won a lot of football games,” Jones said. “They both bring different aspects to the game.

“Are they different from (Argos QB) Ricky Ray? Yeah. Ricky Ray is Ricky Ray. He’s probably top two or three in the history of the league. They’re different, but they’re both very good players. They’ve played a lot of football and they’ve both been very successful at different phases of their careers, so we look forward to seeing what they bring to our football team.”

Collaros said he was heading into the game thinking that he was the starter — “All the quarterbacks should approach it that way,” he said — but noted that he wasn’t up to speed on all the subterfuge regarding the identity of the starter.

He reiterated that if he does in fact get the call, he’ll try to do what he’s asked to do by the coaches and not go beyond that. Collaros isn’t interested in all the talk about him trying to re-establish himself as a CFL starter or reaching the level at which he played prior to losing the No. 1 job in Hamilton.

“They call quarterbacks game managers,” Collaros said. “Even the best ones out there, you’re still managing the game because the goal is to win.

“You don’t go out there for personal numbers. That’s why sometimes when you set a goal for yards or completions or whatever, you get caught up in that. The goal is to win. Whatever we can do as a unit to do that and to help our team win, we’re going to do that.”

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Collaros began his CFL career with the Argos in 2012, which was also Ray’s first season in Toronto.

The veteran showed the rookie the ropes back then and Collaros has put those lessons to good use.

“Everybody who has covered Ricky knows he’s not the most vocal guy around the team,” said Collaros, who spent the 2012 and ’13 seasons with Toronto. “He’s not a rah-rah guy. But I learned a lot from him, on how to go about your business and be a professional, whether it’s how to study, how to watch film, how to study the progressions and the concepts and all those things, what to do each day, taking care of his body.

“He has done a really good job of that; obviously, he’s playing still and I don’t even know how old he is anymore (38). He had a very positive impact on my career, just on how to carry yourself as a professional and, if you want to stick around, the things to do.”

•••

Ray has given Jones fits over the years — and that included when Jones was the Argos’ defensive co-ordinator and had to face Ray every day in practice.

“It was fun,” Jones said. “When he’s doing this (Jones simulated patting a football and looking for multiple receivers) that’s when you know you’ve got him. You’re trying to make him do that type of thing where he’s holding it because that’s the one time where he doesn’t feel comfortable.”

“In my honest opinion, the only way to fluster him is to hit him,” added Roughriders defensive tackle Eddie Steele. “You have to get after him, make him feel the rush, make him feel the presence of the defensive line and put that punishment on his body.”

Even that hasn’t always worked. Ray has passed for 60,429 yards in his career, the fourth-highest such number in CFL history. He needs 10 touchdown passes to move past Ron Lancaster into fourth all-time in league history.

“When you get to him and you hit him, he’ll get up and he’ll do his jersey like this,” Jones said, tugging on the collar of an imaginary jersey as if to straighten it. “He kind of just shrugs it off and goes on and gets in the huddle.

“He can throw a touchdown and it’ll take him about nine seconds to jog down there and pat the guy on the head. His heart rate is in the 60s, probably.”

•••

The game Friday will be Collaros’ first regular-season game with the Roughriders at Mosaic Stadium.

He played in Saskatchewan’s 39-12 pre-season loss to the visiting Calgary Stampeders on June 7, but Friday’s crowd will be larger and — because it’s the regular season — more will be on the line.

On Thursday, Collaros admitted some trepidation about coming out of the tunnel with his teammates.

“With the mist, I’m always kind of scared running through that,” he said with a grin. “I’ve seen too many (instances) of cheerleaders getting run over. And selfishly, I don’t want to trip over a cord. That would be awful. That’d be a TSN blooper forever.

“I’m really excited about (running onto the field) … There’s no feeling quite like that, getting hyped up (and) the adrenaline. The first play, there’s always a ton of adrenaline and then after that, you’re just playing football again. You kind of tune everything else out.”