Larry Dean is poised to tackle a new challenge, as opposed to a rival ball-carrier.
Dean, an elite middle linebacker during the six seasons in which he played in the Canadian Football League, is the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ new Player Personnel Co-ordinator.
Where does he hope this post-playing journey will take him?
“To the top, ultimately,” he said with a smile while sitting beside Roughriders Vice-President of Football Operations and General Manager Jeremy O’Day during a Thursday media conference at Mosaic Stadium.
“I definitely have aspirations to become a GM and I think I’m with the right guy and in the right room to have the mentors to show me the ropes.”
O’Day’s path is strikingly similar to that of Dean, in that they both retired as players without any evident decline in their performance.
In the case of O’Day, he stepped away from the game as an on-field participant after being named a CFL West Division All-Star — for the sixth time — in 2010.
He made an immediate, seamless transition into a non-playing role with the organization. Early in his career in Football Operations, he added Dean to the Roughriders’ negotiation list on Aug. 31, 2011. That happened to be O’Day’s 37th birthday.
Comparably, Dean was a West All-Star in 2023, when he was also named the Roughriders’ Most Outstanding Player and Most Outstanding Defensive Player.
During a season in which he turned 35, he amassed 104 defensive tackles — the second-highest total of his career — after toppling 101 ball-carriers the year before. He peaked, statistically, by making 105 tackles for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2018.
But even while continuing to excel on the field, Dean had an eye toward the future.
In 2023, he became part of the CFL Player Mentorship Program, which allows active participants in the three-down game to learn more about the business side.
Dean has also been heavily involved in the CFL Players’ Association, as was O’Day when he wore a green and white uniform.
“I kind of shared my same story with him when I gave him my pitch to join us (in the Football Operations department),” the Roughriders’ GM said. “Until I started talking to him, I didn’t really realize how similar his path was to what I had experienced.
“After the season, I knew we were going to add somebody in Football Operations in more of a personnel role, so I called Larry.”
Contact was made during an off-season in which Dean became a free agent.
“Our conversation wasn’t about ‘Do you have interest from other teams?’ or anything like that,” O’Day noted. “It was more about letting him know that we had an opportunity here. He was one of the first guys that we thought of.”
Dean’s name was brought up in discussions that also included Assistant GM Kyle Carson, Director of Football Operations Jordan Greenly and newly appointed Head Coach Corey Mace.
“Coach Mace talked to Larry shortly after he was hired and he has heard nothing but great things about him,” O’Day said.
“Because of his leadership skills and his work ethic and how well-liked he is and how professional he is, I thought he would be a natural fit, so I gave him a call and gave him a pitch.
“I told him he would kind of be starting at the ground level, similar to what I did.”
Dean’s interest was piqued and the initial conversation flowed, as did subsequent discussions.
“I told him that when I was offered a job in Football Operations, I still wanted to play another season, and I’m sure Larry did, too,” said O’Day, who spent 14 seasons as a CFL offensive lineman.
“What I shared with him is, ‘If you play one more year, you’re going to want to play another year after that as well.’ I said, ‘I’d love to play right now if I could, but eventually you have to make a decision and move on from your career.’
“He asked what it would entail and I told him he would be working with myself and Kyle and Jordan and Paul (Jones, Assistant GM).”
A working template has long been in place.
“It’s basically very similar to how I started, with doing some of the administration stuff,” O’Day continued. “He’s also going to get involved with some of the player personnel. We’re going to get him involved with the draft and evaluating players.
“I shared with him my experience of how different it was going from the locker room to being in player personnel. Now you’re evaluating your friends and your teammates, which is not the easiest thing to do when you’re close to everyone.
“He asked what that was like for me and I told him that was probably the biggest challenge. You’re a leader in the locker room and all of a sudden you’re working in the front office.
“It’s a little bit different, because a lot of the conversations you have with your friends in football are about football. Some of that becomes limited when you’re in a different role.”
But the benefits easily overshadow any challenges that may be presented by navigating a path into a new role.
“I tried to get him excited about how fun our job is,” O’Day said. “Every day is different.
“There are some days when your job is to watch players at an NFL camp or an NCAA game. Or, you’re going to watch practice, or you’ll evaluate practice and games.
“There’s also the business side of it — the salary cap and the collective bargaining agreement. One of the things that’s attractive to him is that he has also been a player rep, so he has been with the players’ association and is familiar with the CBA.
“I could tell while I was talking to him that he was getting more excited about it. I don’t want to say that I knew he would say ‘yes’ to it, but I knew that the conversation went really well.
“He asked for a couple of days to talk to his family. I think he wanted to talk to his dad about it. And then he called me a couple of days later and said that he was in and that he was ready to move into the next chapter of his career.
“We’re super-excited about it. We’re all fired up. It’s like we signed another free agent.”
In this case, the “free agent” is the 14th player in Saskatchewan Roughriders history to retire for non-injury-related reasons after being named an All-Star.
That fraternity also includes O’Day, receivers Jack Nix (whose final season was 1951) and Holland Aplin (1952), two-way lineman Mike Cassidy (1955), centre/linebacker Neil Habig (1964), receiver Hugh Campbell (1969), centre Ted Urness (1970), fullback George Reed (1975), receiver Rhett Dawson (1976), defensive linemen James Curry (1989) and Neal Smith (1999), and linebackers Willie Pless (1999) and Solomon Elimimian (2019).
“To walk away from the game unscathed and on my own timetable obviously is a pleasure,” said Dean, who never missed a game during the six CFL regular seasons for which he was available.
“It’s an enjoyment of mine to be able to do so on your own terms and also be able to make the smooth transition and still be around the game of football, which I love.
“I’m definitely blessed.”
