THE DON RETURNS TO MONTREAL
The Montreal Alouettes announced on Wednesday that Don Matthews and Turk Schonert have joined the coaching staff as consultants.
Matthews returns to the Alouettes in a consultant role for the second consecutive year, having previously helped the Montreal coaching staff during the second half of the 2013 season.
Matthews was the Alouettes’ head coach in 2002 and led the team to a Grey Cup victory in his first season while taking home Coach of the Year honours for the fifth time in his career. During his five years as head coach of the Alouettes, the Amesbury, MA, native recorded 58 regular season wins, five playoffs wins and four East Division titles, guiding Montreal to three Grey Cup appearances in 2002, 2003 and 2005.
Schonert joins the team as an offensive consultant and will help the coaching staff with game planning.
After playing for nine seasons in the NFL as a quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals and Atlanta Falcons from 1981 to 1989, Schonert joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a quarterbacks coach in 1992. He later joined the Buffalo Bills, the Carolina Panthers, the New York Giants and the New Orleans Saints before returning to the Bills in 2006 in the same position. Under his tutelage in Buffalo, quarterback Trent Edwards was the most productive rookie passer in the NFL in 2007. He was promoted to the team’s offensive coordinator in 2008.
Good to see the Don back in good health and ready to get back at er. Imagine what he could have done here if he'd been given the proper tools to build a team moulded in his image. Could have avoided the telethon no doubt.
smells like a gong show a brewin
Look what happens when you lose a franchise QB and all the “development QB’s” have left.
This is a prime example of what happens when you don’t let your back-up QB’s play when the game gets out of hand, just to let your starter pad stats – you don’t know if your “next one” can play.
Now the birds don’t have a QB , maybe Popp isn’t the talent guru he’s made out to be. Maybe he and the coaches were made to look good at the hands (arm) of Calvillo
Talk about grasping for straws. Hire the man with more CFL experience than most entire staffs, then hire a CFL virgin to game plan. That's life without Calvillo.
Higgins and Dinwiddie will be toast by the end of the year or sooner
It worked last year with THE DON coming in as a consultant. I remember one of the first things he mentioned last year was the arm of Troy Smith.If I remember right Turk's name came up in the offseason. He may not have CFL experience but he has been a long time QB coach and the Als need a QB coach that has that experience, has been successful at it, and is not the same age as Troy Smith.Dinwiddie has enough on his plate. barely any coaching experience and thrust into th OC role. He does know the CFL however.… Read more »
When you hire a Head Coach the first thing he needs to be able to do is bring in Coordinators and Assistants. Where did Tom Higgins make his contact list working in the head office? As for developing a backup QB that's bunk. They had Adrian MacPherson for 5 years he was happy holding a clip board. Calvillo was just that good you couldn't pull him out of a game, and nobody could beat him out in training camp. Montreal with their QB and O-line never required a rebuild. On the other hand Desjardins is gone, and Popp spent off… Read more »
This was all in the works from the beginning of the season. What else did anyone expect to happen after they fire their OC just before/early in training camp.
Uh, Buono didn't lose it – he was pushed out of Calgary by the brilliant Feterik. Buono immediately made BC the class of the West for several years in the 2000s. He may have reached the end of the line a couple years ago, but he had an incredible 20-year run with two different teams. And it took Calgary several years to recover, until they got John Hufnagel.
Of course, Hufnagel has the same problem with losing at home in the playoffs…ha ha ha.
Lewis Grant