Chris Jones’ Global Folly could come back to bite the Elks against BC – 3DownNation

Since the Edmonton Elks last faced the BC Lions in Vancouver – a 59-15 win in their season opener just 56 days ago – head coach and general manager Chris Jones has made 83 separate changes to his team’s roster.

A revolving door depth chart has long been the hallmark of a man who would cut his mother if it secured a win, and frankly, it’s hard to blame him for that. Despite all of President Victor Cui’s promises of victory, the Elks are a 2-5 team looking up to the rest of the West Division, and Jones has yet to forge a winning formula from the wreckage of the organization’s former regime.

Each of those roster moves will play a small role in determining the outcome when these two teams meet again on Saturday night, and in many ways things are looking good for the Elks.

Undeniably improved and healthy for the first time, this is a game that could be a lot tighter than the double-digit spread suggests. However, Edmonton will enter BC Place at a slight disadvantage, due in part to one of Chris Jones’ roster changes well before the current campaign has even started.

That’s because, for all his dealings, the Elks will play a man short at BC Place in the season.

On paper the above statement is demonstrably false, but in practice there is no other way to describe a depth map with three kickers.

In addition to Sergio Castillo and new punter Jon Ryan, the Elks will have to dress Australian Ryan Meskell on Saturday. A 26-of-39 career field goals player at the University of Hawaii, his best bet is to contribute as a kickoff specialist — something he did well in college but has little value on a professional roster.

Love it or hate it – I’m not going to try to convince you either way in this article – the CFL’s global initiative makes it clear that an international player must be on every team’s matchday list. With Danish offensive lineman Steven Nielsen struggling with an illness, the team had no choice but to choose between Meskell and Brazilian kicker Rafael Gaglianone for last spot in the lineup.

With Tomas Jack-Kurdyla replacing Nielsen as sixth offensive lineman, Edmonton will have one less body to cover kicks for a questionable unit of special teams. However, it didn’t have to be that way.

On February 28, in one of his first steps as the team’s general manager, Jones dropped three players from the Elks roster. All three were globals and all three had prior gaming experience.

The message was clear: Jones would tolerate Nielsen as a Deep Piece – his college pedigree and past NFL interest guaranteed that – but he had no desire to amuse other global position players. He reinforced that opinion in the 2022 Global Draft when he and his assistant GM Geroy Simon, who was BC’s director of global scouting at the time, picked kickers with all three picks and passed their first-round winner to 30-year-old punter Ben Griffiths, who never went to camp appeared.

It’s easy to dismiss Jones’ choices, and there are no doubt many Elks fans who share his ambivalence about global players. Still, three years of data has shown us that this is the worst type of strategy to employ with the mandatory roster quota, and a failure to stock up on capable special teams is now coming back to bite Edmonton.

All of this would hardly be worth a footnote in the game preview without a random twist. On that fateful day in February, the Elks released Mexican receiver Diego Viamontes and French linebacker Maxime Rouyer, both of whom would have been nice right now. However, the third player cut will actively get a chance to hurt her on Saturday.

Belgium defensive tackle Tibo Debailie, an unannounced Towson University third-round global pick, had played three games in 2021 while recording a single tackle with extremely limited replays. Few fans would know his name, a player so inconsequential that he found out he was sacked by reading a tweet from Dave Campbell. Elks’ management claims they tried to contact him in a number of ways, but Debailie never received their communication.

“I never spoke to Chris Jones about it. I never met him, I never spoke to him at all. One night I came back from the gym and I was sitting on the couch just chilling with my dad and mom and suddenly I see on Twitter that I’ve been fired,” the Belgian native told me last week.

“I’ve never heard of Edmonton. No texting, no email, no calling.”

It seemed clear that Debaillie’s CFL adventure was over and he signed with the Potsdam Royals of Germany. That was until the BC Lions emailed him desperate to replace the late Global Special Teamer Niklas Gustav.

With all due respect to Thiadric Hansen’s ability to get garbage-time sacks and cover kicks, what Debaillie has done since was the best performance yet by a global position player. He has played about half of the Lions reps in nose tackle in six games, recording nine tackles and one sack. He often sees the field at key moments and goal-line situations and enjoys a level of absolute confidence that no other international player has.

Meanwhile, Edmonton is struggling to find a competent American defensive tackle to fill a gap. Isn’t irony delicious?

As heartwarming as his story was, Deballie’s presence won’t win BC and playing shorthanded won’t cost Edmonton anything. However, through either misjudgment or a lack of effort from the Elks, the Lions scrapped an Impact player that the green and gold could have desperately used.

In an industry where winning margins are as slim as professional football, sometimes that’s what separates the good teams from the bad.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect the Edmonton Elks’ claim that they attempted to contact Debaillie to notify him of his release.