Argos trying to figure how to deal with suspended Chad Kelly

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The coach of the year and the troubled quarterback talk almost every day.

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Sometimes, Ryan Dinwiddie checks in on Chad Kelly, the suspended Argo quarterback, and sometimes Kelly checks in on the head coach who helped make the Most Outstanding Player in his first full season as a starter in the Canadian Football League.

These are complicated times for the Argos, for their highest-paid player who isn’t being paid, for their fan base even, with their CFL season set to begin at home on Sunday night.

Dinwiddie has no intention of turning his back on or walking away from the quarterback suspended for violating the league’s policy of gender-based violence.

He wants his quarterback wearing Double Blue this season. He just doesn’t know when. He doesn’t yet know how. He does know what Kelly is capable of doing on the field and part of his job now is make him better off the field.

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“It’s tough,” said Dinwiddie, the very successful head coach.

The Argos were 16-2 last season. That seems forgotten in the Kelly scandal, in an off-season of losing some offensive weapons, with the lingering affects of the East final self-defeat against the Montreal Alouettes.

“You look back at everything that went on,” Dinwiddie said. “Chad’s taken the opportunity to reflect on all of that. He’s been engaged in the courses he’s got to take. He’s taking this seriously. He’ll learn from this. I really believe that.

“We talk all the time. You can’t turn a blind eye to him or to the circumstances. You have to look at the big picture. At the same time, he’s human, he’s hurting right now, he’s missing football. He wants to be with us. I always make sure I call him or I text him. I make sure he’s involved.”

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Kelly is as involved with the Argos by not playing than few others have ever been before. He watches the film of practice on a daily basis. He is working out on his own, working with receivers of some quality, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as getting reps in every day, working with the first team, running the show. Being the quarterback.

He talks with the first-year starter Cameron Dukes, who is interning for Kelly’s job.

Last season seems like almost a million years ago. The Argos dominated the campaign. Kelly was a sure-thing, no-argument Most Outstanding Player.

Until the Eastern final. Until the Kelly collapse just days before the MOP was awarded. And then the legal problems, the league investigation, the nine-game (minimum) regular-season suspension.

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The fall was quick and hard and troubling.

“When you finish a year like that it takes a while to get over the defeat,” Dinwiddie said.

And now a season will begin with little-known Dukes at quarterback, with the Argos getting less pre-season talk than they normally get.

The Eastern final had Toronto sort of buzzing for a minute or two. The game had a terrific crowd. That was the build the Argos had been forever looking for. And then they did the Toronto thing and shot themselves in the gut.

It was a dreadful defeat to Montreal.

Now Dinwiddie has to figure out what works best for his football team, what will eventually work best for the returning quarterback — when he returns — what works best for a fan base some of whom are disgusted by Kelly.

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The Argos, with Pinball Clemons coaching, with him now as general manager, always have been about second chances. Giving athletes who messed up another shot. Sometimes more than just one

This is Kelly’s last shot for CFL redemption.

“When he does come back, I don’t know if the right thing to do is play him right away,” Dinwiddie said. “There is no playbook for dealing with this.”

A quarterback means everything to a football team. If you don’t have one, you don’t have a chance. With Kelly, the Argos had the best or second-best QB in the CFL.

When he was playing.

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“We’re going to get him in practice, we’re going to get him up to speed and then we’re going to see how to handle it. I don’t know when the day is coming that we get him on the practice field,” the coach said.

“It will take a while for him to develop a rapport with his receivers, to get his timing back. The guys are going to have used to him, he’s going to have to get used to them.”

There is no official date for Kelly’s return to the Argos. The suspension was for two pre-season games and a minimum of nine regular-season games.

He almost has to apply to get back into the CFL and commissioner Randy Ambrosie has to accept him back into the league — and believe he is heading in the right direction with his life.

Dinwiddie, meanwhile, has a game to coach Sunday night at home, a team to prepare, a season to play. He was coach of the year last year.

He may need to be coach of the year again to make sense of all that surrounds the opening of another new season.

ssimmons@postmedia.com

x.com/simmonssteve

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