The background to the whole scene is, of course, that the club’s savings are worryingly low and there is no improvement in sight.
Despite all the reasons the Edmonton Elks had to release Chris Jones, the only number that mattered was zero.
Zero wins in the season.
No playoff participation.
And in the end, there was no confidence that he would be the one to turn the franchise around.
Sunday’s loss, which dropped the team to 0-5, was the straw that broke the camel’s back despite the season being planned as a comeback. And it also serves as a microcosm of the Double-E era of Chris Jones 2.0.
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Just seven seasons after leading the club to its last championship in 2015 as head coach of the Michael Reilly-led Dream Team, Jones was called upon again, hoping fans would forgive him for running off with the Grey Cup and assistant coaching staff in hand to wear the other color green on the other side of the straw curtain.
There was no intentional departure from Jones this time. If that was the end result, it’s a wonder they didn’t take him out during the off week last week.
If the Elks couldn’t get rid of him fast enough, their fans had more than enough of what they saw when he returned after the first two unsuccessful seasons.
Then again, “losing season” might be too harsh a description. Jones & Co. were the absolute worst. They are the laughing stock of the Canadian Football League and the punch line of the joke in Edmonton that asked, “Is there anything to do here today?”
“Well, there’s an Elks game going on down in the Commonwealth.”
“So no?”
To say that Jones is no longer popular with fans would be an understatement.
Hell, he could probably still hear the echoes reverberating from the once-hallowed halls of Commonwealth Stadium as he was led out the door before Monday’s announcement, after the stands erupted in a chorus of “We want Tre” Ford as the Elks suffered another fourth-quarter collapse en route to a still-incredible 37-34 loss to the Ottawa Redblacks the night before. It was their third straight loss by walk-off field goal.
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Unbelievable. And yet somehow just normal for the course the Elks have taken since their polarizing realignment during the 2020 season, which was canceled due to COVID-19.
After a brief stint under Jaime Elizondo, in which the Elks debuted with a record of 3-11 (.214), Jones was brought in to get things back on track. His record of 26-10 in two regular seasons and 3-1 in the playoffs during his first try in Edmonton was the Chris Jones the Elks board had hoped for.
But they didn’t even get Chris Jones from the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
The result was two consecutive 4-14 seasons, and memories of the playoffs began to fade in the rearview mirror.
What they ultimately came away with was a bruise in the form of a 22-game losing streak at home, which began two head coaches earlier but occurred largely under Jones’s direction.
Jones has posted a season record of 8-28 (.222) over the last three years as head coach and general manager, and only his predecessor Elizondo has to thank for not achieving the worst winning percentage in franchise history.
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And the current team couldn’t have done anything more to bring down their head coach even if they tried.
Like all the other setbacks this franchise has suffered over the past five years—from a CEO complaining that there were “too many white people” in the stands to executive signing contracts that pushed the company ever further under the CFL’s football operations salary cap, to name a few—the latest self-implosion couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Sports fans in the city were still reeling from their beloved Edmonton Oilers’ incredibly up-and-down NHL season, followed by another incredibly up-and-down playoff battle that went all the way to the end, only to fall by the narrowest of margins to the Florida Panthers in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
And attention shifted from Rogers Place to Commonwealth just in time to see another Edmonton team attempt to bounce back after a terrible start. Only this time, they couldn’t.
The Elks continue to circle the drain, flushing a product onto the field that fewer and fewer people are willing to pay good money to witness – as evidenced by the fact that this year the entire upper basin was covered with a tarp and the remaining lower basin is lucky if it is half full.
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The background to the whole affair is, of course, that the club’s savings are worryingly low, there is no improvement in sight and nine board members have little interest in improving the bottom line for the non-profit club.
If the whole idea was to offer potential buyers a bargain, then the Elks may have succeeded in at least one thing this year.
But if it wasn’t Chris Jones, with his otherwise impressive resume, who fixed the problem, then who?
Email: [email protected]
On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge
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