On Tuesday night, Eskimos general manager Eric Tillman took to 630 CHED for an interview with Dan Tencer. The most interesting piece of the 20-plus-minute interview? When Tilman said that with the power of Marty McFly’s car, he wouldn’t trade Ricky Ray (listen here).
“If you could hop in the DeLorean and go back to December, would you do the trade again?” Tencer asked.
“Honestly?” Tillman said back. “I would probably not. I would have listened to my wife, who begged me not to make the trade, because she talked about the fact that we went 11-7 and we could actually have an off-season where I might be semi-popular in Edmonton for a change and to just stay status quo.”
Tillman went on to argue the notion that the Ray trade was spurred by ego.
“Call me stupid, that’s OK. You can call me ugly, I think most people would agree with that. If this deal was made because of personal sentiment, if there was any selfish dynamic in it…you couldn’t have paid me $100 million to make the trade because it would have been so nice to have a quiet off-season.
“I truly felt that long term, not 2012…if I had a terminal illness and I knew I was only going to be there one more year, the easy thing to do was stay status quo. When you look at this franchise in 2013, 2014, and beyond I felt that at some point we had to make a transition at quarterback and this was my greatest fear.
“I was afraid that if we stayed status quo, even if we won 11 or 12 games again, that we would have Ricky who would then be a year closer to being 35, we still would have not played any of our young quarterbacks which we saw last year, that didn’t happen, they didn’t develop and we’d have a ton of free agents because we had a quarterback making north of 400 (thousand).”
(From Edmonton Journal)
7 comments:
Is Tillman admitting a mistake, or is he patronizing the EE fanbase until they rebound? I wouldn't be surprized if the league didn't "influence" the move of a first rate QB to Toronto, considering their inability to groom their own quarterback.
Any lengthy interview with Tillman is pure gold. One thing for sure, he does explain the reality of the salary cap system well and the tough balance and choices to be made.
Grey Cup in Toronto, Feds give the CFL millions toward the cup, no chance T O will be competitve without a Q B , league behind closed doors asks Tillman to help out, send Ricky Ray to T O for favours later.
Just thinking out loud
How E-T could seriously think he could pitch the Edmonton football fan on Steven Jyles after the success of the team last year was a real no-brainer. I understand the Toronto being competitive so they can host GC game, but Tillman got fleeced. Oh well!
Who cares if he admits it was a mistake or not. The rest of the world already knew it. Good to see him get taken down a peg or two. Even better if he misses the playoffs.
I think that the problem really lies at the OC position. They had success running the ball last year (hence Ray was overpaid for what he was needed to do). The einstein that thinks Jyles should be slinging it should be the guy who is gone and that is Edmonton’s biggest problem. Edmonton ran the ball successfully against the Riders when they attempted to do so. Why they didn’t stick with it in the 2nd half is beyond me, but I am certainly glad as it allowed the Riders to take the victory
Short term pain, long term gain. Tillman has a plan.
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