In his media scrum, Edmonton Elks head coach Mark Kilam was very excited about the prospects of the team and the coaching staff moving forward, which is to be expected. He mentioned there is a sense of clarity within the coaching staff that allows them to fully focus on football moving forward.
He mentioned he expects an extremely competitive training camp and that it “brings the best out of competitors.” It’s certainly poised to be a competitive camp, with positions to be won across all areas of this football team: a chance for number one receivers to emerge; O-line battles will be rampant; the DE position is stacked with talent; a potential backup QB spot on the line; and, of course, three high-profile LBs to fill two spots. It’ll be a lot of fun and I can’t wait for it to get going. Neither can Coach Kilam, based on the presser.
As far as specifics, I asked him if he had a favourite schematic fit with any of the free agents the Elks brought in, at the risk of not picking “his favourite child”:
“No, because I think football is about twelve people having to do their jobs at once to be successful, in addition to a coaching staff helping them out. But I think we want to be a physical football team. You see the size of these dudes we brought in over here across the board at every position. I think that’s kind of a non-negotiable on our football team. That’s who we’re gonna be. I think we wanted to put some more weapons around Cody. We’ve got, you know, some vertical stretch, but we also got guys that can stretch the field, block and do some things around the box. I think we got a level of nasty on the o-line that we need and we want, and you know I just got chills saying that because that’s how we want to build this thing. So you combine them with the guys that are coming back, you know we’ve got, like I said, training camp is gonna be ultra-competitive. We’re gonna try to put the guys in as many situations as we can, as many reps as we can as far as taking care of their legs, all that stuff, but put them in situations where they can show who they are so we can make our best team Week 1.”
I asked him where Coulter Woodmansey would likely be playing. He’s making $300K a year and is the highest-paid Canadian non-QB in the league:
“We’re just gonna have to wait and see.”
Not a lot of ammo on that one, but it’s to be expected. I’d probably like to see him play guard and keep David Beard at centre, but of course that’s what training camp is for. The positions are there to be won, and players are there to show out.
My biggest takeaway from Coach Kilam was his sense of optimism. Similar to general manager Ed Hervey, nothing he said seemed to be lip service, which you may have gotten in years past. Everything positive that he said about the future of the team and about the roster he really believed. Which is something, despite what we may want to think, isn’t always the case. Sometimes coaches just say what needs to be said or what needs to be heard. That wasn’t the case here. It was a legitimate sense of optimism, belief and an upward look for the future.
