Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ general manager Ted Goveia has only been on the job for two months and he is already compromising his personal team-building philosophy for the betterment of the organization.
The long-time scout has a self-professed love of building through internal talent development but held his nose to swing big in free agency this year, believing his new team to be right on the cusp.
“I’m not a firm believer in building teams through free agency. I’m not sure it’s the way I’d like to go next year. I think that in some sports that works a lot easier than football. There’s just too many people involved in football,” Goveia confessed. “But after meeting with the guys that are here and knowing the coaches that we brought in, I thought we can make a run right away and so that’s why I dipped into the free agency pool as much as I did.”
The Ticats signed eight new additions following the opening of free agency, including arguably the biggest name available in receiver Kenny Lawler. It cost a pretty penny to bring in that talent but Goveia opted to do it in his own way. He elected to lock most of his big-game targets into multi-year deals, including an unusually long three-year contract for promising strong-side linebacker Reggie Stubblefield.
“It was important for me. I’m not big on mercenaries or one-year deals. I’m trying to build the football team. We were able to get that done on a term that worked for both of us,” the first-year GM remarked.
“I don’t know if it’s much of a sales pitch. You want to get them here for the right reasons for both sides. I think every negotiation was different. Some required deeper pocketbooks to get those done and for other guys it was just a perfect fit. The pitch was really, ‘We have a lot of great pieces already in the building and this isn’t a rebuild situation.'”
Lost on no one was the fact that five of the free agent frenzy signees, including Lawler, came over from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. If you count earlier additions like Owen Hubert and Drew Wolitarsky, that number jumps to seven players trading blue for black in their wardrobes.
Goveia helped shape Winnipeg into a five-time Grey Cup qualifier and two-time winner during his time as assistant general manager. While he admits that time spent in that organization gave him an increased comfort level with those players, he swears he didn’t have them earmarked for acquisition when he walked out the door.
“I didn’t think when I was leaving Winnipeg, ‘I’m going to target player A, B, C and F’ — at all. I didn’t think about that. My first month on the job was filling out our coaching staff, negotiating their contracts, then hiring the best scouting department that I could,” he insisted.
“I wasn’t looking to pull people from any team. I was looking to add pieces that are used to playing long and in November, that get what it takes to win, that will fit into our locker room. Character was a big part of it. Being a team player, the communication piece required at certain positions was a big part of building the roster and all of those guys met that criteria.”
It wasn’t just marquee stars on the GM’s shopping list and he insists not all the players added are guaranteed to start for the team. Wolitarsky was brought in as much for his value as a locker room glue-guy as he was for his ability to catch passes. TyJuan Garbutt and Miles Fox are young, promising pass rushers who can be part of the solution at a position of need for the team. And Goveia expressed particular glee at the signing of versatile linebacker Brian Cole II with the aim of getting “sneaky better” at depth spots.
Underlying every move was a desire to improve the fabric of the team culture by bringing in high-character additions. In assessing what was needed, he included every level of the organization and had extensive conversations with both players and staff to make the correct adjustments.
“I did not operate in a silo. I included our entire coaching staff. Coach O was involved in it, our ops staff was involved, our scouts were involved in it, and our current players were involved in it too. I wanted everybody as a full participant, not because I needed their blessings to make decisions, but everyone’s got a different experience from a different level in the organization, and so I just kind of listened,” Goveia stated.
“I don’t lean on the players to tell me who should go and who should stay — that’s not necessarily fair. But I met with as many people as I could, including the ops people, and people in the building. Who’s a good teammate? Who isn’t? Who doesn’t show up for treatment on time? Who misses appointments? Who lets you down? That was the stuff that I’m interested in. Because when you build a team, we spend a lot of time together and I often joke around that no one makes enough money in the CFL to sit in the locker room beside some guy that’s not enjoying coming to work. It’s just weeding through that and adding pieces that I know personality-wise and ability-wise will make our locker room better.”
While it came about through a different avenue than he might have preferred, the end result is a team shaped in Goveia’s image. Or rather, a team steeped in the type of hard-nosed and collaborative culture he wants to instill in his hometown club. A roster tweaked rather than sand-blasted, elevating what already existed into a form that can compete for championships in the short term.
“You’ve got to learn what the team is that you’re currently walking into. I’m the new guy, so I’m not one to come in here and blow it all up. I don’t believe in that. We made some changes, for sure, and we let go of some good players. It’s all part of it, but change was needed. When you don’t make the playoffs, you’ve got to make some changes,” Goveia said of his process.
“I wasn’t going to take a chance on hiring somebody that our players weren’t familiar with, or our coaches or myself, because I don’t want to hire somebody that’s just here because I paid them more money than the next person. I don’t have any interest in that.”
