Chris Jones’ firing another blow to Edmonton Elks franchise

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For all the reasons the Edmonton Elks had to fire Chris Jones, the only number that mattered was zero.

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Zero wins on the season.

Zero playoff appearances.

And in the end, zero confidence that he was going to be the guy to turn around the franchise’s fortunes.

Sunday’s loss to drop to 0-5 on what had been all lined up to be a bounce-back season was the final straw. And it also serves as a microcosm of the double-E era of Chris Jones 2.0.

Just seven seasons removed from guiding the club to its last championship as head coach of the Michael Reilly-led dream team in 2015, Jones was called upon once again in the hopes that fans would forgive how he ducked out, Grey Cup and assistant coaching staff in hand, to don that other colour of green on the other side of the Straw Curtain.

This time, there was no premeditated exit on Jones’s part. If this was going to be the end result, it’s a wonder they didn’t go ahead and remove him during last week’s bye.

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If the Elks couldn’t get rid of him quickly enough, their fan base was more than fed up with what they’ve seen following first two losing seasons in his return.

Then again, losing seasons might be too kind of a description. Jones & Co. have been the absolute bottom of the barrel. The laughing stock of the Canadian Football League and the punchline of the joke in Edmonton asking: “Is there anything to do around here today?”

“Well, there is an Elks game down at Commonwealth.”

“So, no then?”

To say Jones wore out his welcome with the fan base would be an understatement.

Heck, he could probably still hear the echoes reverberating off the once-hallowed halls of Commonwealth Stadium as he was being ushered out the door ahead of Monday’s announcement, after the stands erupted in a chorus of, “We want Tre” Ford, as the Elks were suffering yet another fourth-quarter collapse on the way to a still-unbelievable 37-34 loss to the Ottawa Redblacks one night earlier. It was their third loss via walk-off field goal in a row.

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Unbelievable. Yet somehow simply par for whatever course the Elks have been on since undergoing their polarizing re-brand during the cancelled season in 2020 due to COVID-19.

After a short stint under Jaime Elizondo that saw the Elks debut with a 3-11 record (.214), Jones was brought in to get things back on track. His record of 26-10 in two regular seasons, and 3-1 in the playoffs during his first go-round in Edmonton was the Chris Jones the Elks board of directors was hoping to get.

But they didn’t even get Saskatchewan Roughriders Chris Jones.

What they ended up with was back-to-back seasons of 4-14, and playoff memories growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.

What they ended up with was a black eye in the form of a 22-game home losing skid, which began two head coaches earlier, but the majority of which happened on Jones’s watch.

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With an 8-28 regular-season record (.222) as both head coach and general manager over the past three years, Jones only has his predecessor, Elizondo, to thank for avoiding going down with worst win percentage in franchise history.

And this current roster couldn’t have done anything more to bury their head coach if they tried.

Just like every other blow this franchise has suffered over the past five years — from a board chair complaining about having “too many white guys” in the stands, to signing off on executive contracts that kept burying them exponentially under the CFL’s football-operations salary cap, to name a couple — the latest self-implosion couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

Sports fans in the city were still reeling from an incredibly up-and-down NHL season by their beloved Edmonton Oilers, which was followed by another incredibly up-and-down playoff push that lasted all the way to the end, only to fall by the slimmest of margins to the Florida Panthers in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.

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And the attention turned from Rogers Place to Commonwealth just in time to see another Edmonton team try and pick itself up after a horrendous start. Only this time it didn’t.

The Elks continue circling the drain and flushing the kind of product out onto the field that fewer and fewer want to pay good money to witness — as evidenced by the entire upper bowl getting tarped off this year, and the remaining lower-bowl lucky to be half full.

The backdrop to the whole scene, of course, is the club is getting dangerously low on savings, with no relief in sight and nine board members with little interest in making up the bottom line for the community-owned club.

If the whole idea was to make it a bargain-bin deal for potential buyers, then the Elks might very well have succeeded in at least one thing this year.

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But if Chris Jones, with his otherwise impressive resume and all, wasn’t the one to fix it, then who is?

E-mail: gmoddejonge@postmedia.com

On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge

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