Riders end year on a high note, but is Chris Jones leaving?
As we usher out 2018 and welcome 2019, the 30th anniversary of the greatest Grey Cup ever featuring the Riders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the Riders made a move at the end of the year which bodes well for the team heading into the new year.
ThreeDownNation reported Paul Jones, the player personnel guru for the Edmonton Eskimos has agreed to become an assistant GM with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, likely in charge of scouting. Jones started with Winnipeg as director of player personnel in 1988 and was later promoted to assistant general manager. After nine years in Winnipeg he went to the Minnesota Vikings as a scouting consultant before joining the Toronto Argonauts as an assistant general manager for the 1998 season.
Paul Jones brought Chris Jones into the CFL as a guest coach when Don Matthews was coaching the Eskimos, so the linkage is pretty long. Add to this the departure of John Murphy, who once upon a time did player personnel for Calgary before coming to the Riders and with the new cap rules on spending for football administration, this is an unexpected and welcome development.
Paul Jones is a pretty low-key guy and will likely be based in the States as he was in Edmonton. The upside of this is with the Riders forced to release a number of scouts, Jones will be invaluable for identifying prospects in the United States, something that is needed more than ever considering the competition from the Alliance of American Football, set to start in February, and the XFL to start next year.