O’shea Making The Transition

THE CANADIAN PRESS

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — One of the most grizzled and intense linebackers in CFL history has signed up for a non-contact ultimate Frisbee league in retirement, and even though the games are not officiated, Mike O’Shea has tried to be on his best behaviour.

His children are watching, after all.

“It’s all like a feel-good, karma-based sort of thing,” O’Shea said with a smile on Thursday. “I’m trying to make the adjustment, to allow me some outlet of physical fitness where I can calm down and learn to just have fun playing without worrying about beating myself up over missed plays.”

He is allowed to beat himself up in his other pursuit, as special teams coach of the Toronto Argonauts, but his players have not missed many plays. The team is one game out of first place in the East Division heading into a bye week and the resurgence is due in no small part to the play of the special teams.

Chad Owens has emerged as one of the league’s most dangerous returners, and a combination of veteran savvy and alert coaching has helped Toronto to a series of close wins. The Argos are 5-3, but four of those wins have been decided by four or fewer points.

After missing the playoffs in each of the last two seasons — including an awful 3-15 campaign last year — Toronto has recaptured some of the strengths that carried the franchise to its last Grey Cup win, six years ago. That team had a middling offence, a stifling defence and superior collection of special teams.

O’Shea was the anchor on many of those teams, in addition to serving as the middle linebacker. That Grey Cup was the third of his career with the Argos, and it was also the last.

His playing career ended last year, having recorded the second-most tackles in history (1,151). O’Shea never publicly declared he had retired, but moved into promising career in sales with a U.S.-based company specializing in hip and knee replacement technology before the Argos called him earlier this year.

“I’m not so sure that I have adjusted to coaching,” O’Shea said. “I know I’ve got a bunch of guys who are taking instruction very well and applying it on the field.”

O’Shea developed a reputation as a player for never begging off a special teams assignment, even in those late October games when the weather was cold and when his body was held together by nothing more than willpower and duct tape.

Argos running back Bryan Crawford remembered a time when the team had been called for too many men on the field during a punt return. It forced the defence back on the field, and O’Shea found Crawford a few minutes later and shoved him in the chest, growling: “Count ’em up.”

“I think it was one of the biggest shots I’ve ever taken in football,” Crawford said with a smile. “Just a two-handed shot to the chest.”

That intensity has followed O’Shea into the coaching ranks, minus the shoves to the chest.

“You can tell what kind of a player he was, just from the way he coaches,” Owens said, “and how much passion he has for the game.”

Owens has compiled the second-most punt return yards (385) in the league this year, and is also third with 470 kickoff return yards. Returner Ryan Christian set a team record two weeks ago when he returned a kickoff 110 yards for a touchdown against the Montreal Alouettes.

“I have a group of guys who rely on me to be able to take in the information, make an adjustment and figure it out,” O’Shea said. “They want to see a leader who’s got his stuff together, right? If you’re losing it and freaking out all the time, it’s going to transfer to their mindset and their play.”

O’Shea admitted he has yelled at some of his players this season, but only because he felt they deserved it.

“He hasn’t changed one bit,” Argos head coach Jim Barker said. “There’s times when I know — I KNOW — that if he had an opportunity to put some pads on, he would go out. He has not lost one ounce of intensity.”