If you’re the Montreal Alouettes, the news just keeps on getting worse. RDS CFL insider, Didier Ormejuste broke the story on Tuesday evening through his Twitter account, (@44DidierRDS) that defensive coordinator; Tim Tibesar has accepted the same position with Purdue University.
This has come as a surprise to those associated with the club. On Tuesday night I corresponded with a source close to the team who was in complete shock. In fact, moving forward, the source was curious to know how the Alouettes will replace the many openings on their coaching staff.
As for Tibesar leaving the Alouettes, it does not come as surprise considering that a college job has more stability than working at the professional level. Moreover, his coaching style was in sync with the NCAA game given his excellent work he did at Kansas State University.
Last offseason, when Tibesar was promoted after former defensive coordinator Tim Burke went to Winnipeg, that there was a lot of pressure on him to duplicate the same performance by the defense. Now, I am not implying that he could not handle the workload. But from first week of the season onwards, the injuries mounted and it did not help his cause in their quest for a third consecutive Grey Cup title.
Simply put, with the exception of their goal line stance in a road victory against the Blue Bombers that kept their first place hopes alive in the division. Tibesar couldn’t find the right chemistry that they had in the previous years under Burke.
In the last four losses of the season, the team defense gave up an astounding 38.2 points per game, 293 passing yards and had three total sacks. For those keeping precise score at home in the last three losses during this abyss, they had zero sacks. Thus it put a lot of pressure on the offense to carry the load.
In-fact, during the East semi-final loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats the Alouettes could not rely on their defense to make a stop against the opposition that were having their own internal issues on offense. At the game, the sentiment among the media members, why couldn’t Tibesar cater to the strengths of his players than playing an aggressive man to man look?
With Tibesar moving on, who could be next in-line for the defensive coordinator’s job? Automatically, the first name that will arise is defensive line coach Michael Sinclair, who has the most experience and knows the defensive schemes.
Furthermore, even though training camp is still five months away, does Marc Trestman (if he stays) want to bring in an outsider who might have different concepts than his predecessors?
As a colleague of mine pointed out, the names of Mike O’Shea, who has already been wooed by the Alouettes for the special team’s job, and former Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach, Greg Marshall might be candidates.
But for now, without question there are dark smoke clouds hovering over the Alouettes on the future of Marc Trestman if he bolts for the NFL. As I wrote in my previous article about who could be the next coach to go, well it was Tibesar’s turn. Now, who could be the next member of the staff to leave this organization?
It continues to get bizarre with the Alouettes and the direction of the coaching ranks. I just hope that they have staff in place by the time the month of June arrives for training camp.
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Photo credit to versusfootball.com
