Ryan Dinwiddie fired William Fields after defensive suggestions ‘fell on deaf ears’

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Ottawa Redblacks’ general manager and head coach Ryan Dinwiddie fired William Fields after his suggestions for improving the defence were not put into action.

“There’s been some things over the last month we were looking at. There’s some things I wanted us to do defensively a little bit differently and fell upon deaf ears. We want to simplify some things for our defence and have less thinking out on the field; more reactionary,” Dinwiddie told TSN 1200 play-by-play man AJ Jakubec.

“We can’t play the same front on first down, I know it’s a run-stopping front, but we gotta let our defensive line play with four down and be in their unders-overs, basic fronts. We gotta slant and angle to create confusion. That’s how you get penetration, get in the backfield.”

Fields was fired following Ottawa’s 34-13 Week 9 loss to Montreal as Alouettes’ quarterback Davis Alexander completed 22-of-30 passes for 420 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions. The Redblacks failed to record a sack in a blowout defeat.

Through seven regular season games in 2026, Ottawa ranked last in the CFL in opponent offensive points per game (34.5), opponent field goals (23), opponent net offence (437.3), opponent yards per play (7.54), opponent average gain on first down (8.0), opponent second down conversion percentage (54.1), and sacks (8).

Dinwiddie moved 68-year-old Jeff Reinebold to the defensive coordinator role, a position he held with the Montreal Alouettes in 2012 during his long coaching career. He installed former Concordia Stingers defensive back Nate Taylor, who had been helping Reinebold, as the team’s special teams coordinator.

“You can’t really bring someone in from outside the building. Our other defensive staff members, they’re good coaches, but they’re young and they haven’t had this experience,” Dinwiddie said.

“Jeff’s done it before, he’s been an interim defensive coordinator. I know he knows defence. Me and Jeff were talking about some of the things we want to do schematically and that was pretty seamless.”

Ottawa (0-7) travels to Saskatchewan to take on the Roughriders (5-2) on Friday, August 7 with kickoff scheduled for 9 p.m. EDT. The Riders beat Edmonton 28-26 in Week 9 at Commonwealth Stadium.

The game will be broadcast on TSN and RDS2 in Canada, CBS Sports Network in the United States, and CFL+ internationally. Radio listeners can tune in on TSN 1200 in Ottawa or 620 CKRM in Regina.