Jordan Maksymic is playing a bigger role on the offensive side of the ball for the Edmonton Eskimos as the pass-game coordinator while coaching the quarterbacks for the third year in a row on the Canadian Football League team.
The high school football product of the Bellerose Bulldogs will assist head coach Jason Maas, who added the offensive coordinator duties to his job title, in formulating a game plan that will bring out the best in the team’s offence lead by quarterback Mike Reilly, the Most Outstanding Player last year in the CFL.
“I’m very excited and very appreciative that coach Maas gave me the opportunity. I’m really looking forward to the new role,” said Maksymic, who rejoined the Eskimos in 2016 after serving two seasons with the Ottawa Redblacks as the running backs' coach and offensive assistant and Maas was on the coaching staff.
The departure of Carson Walch, last year’s offensive coordinator, to the Philadelphia Eagles as the assistant receivers’ coach for the Super Bowl champions prompted Maas to give Maksymic (“an offensive coordinator in waiting,” according to the head coach) extra responsibilities.
“A lot of our pass game last year was developed by Carson and I worked closely with him while he did that so it was just a natural progression when he left that I would take over,” said Maksymic, who will have the task of “looking at the opponent’s defence that we will be facing and coming up with the schemes that I think will be best for us to run.”
Maksymic is prepared for longer hours while burning the candle at both ends as the quarterbacks’ coach and pass-game coordinator.
“We’re definitely busy all the time. It’s always a lot of workload so I don’t know if it will be any more, it will just be a different workload. I will just have to kind of move around my time a little bit differently than I would in the past and spend a little bit more time watching film and making sure that I’m coming up with the right stuff so that we’re successful on game day,” said the MVP of the 2004 Bulldogs in Grade 12 as a first-year starting quarterback.
Marathon workdays during the season are the norm for football coaches.
“Our week starts heavy I guess I could say. The day after a game we’ll be in early and we’ll kind of put the previous night’s game to bed. We’ll watch the film, we’ll grade out players, we’ll meet with our players and make the corrections that we need to make and then right after that game is put to bed so to say, we’ll be moving right on to the next opponent. We start looking at film and we kind of pour over the data that we have, the statics and the data from our film breakdowns, and we get right into our next opponent,” Maksymic said. “Those are pretty long days, definitely 14, 16-hour days and those are the days that I often use the sleeping bag that I have in my office. We're definitely around the office a lot on those days and then as we get into practices the game plan is set so things kind of tone themselves down so our 14 or 16-hour days kind of move down to 12 hour days and we have a few of those as we get closer to the game.”
Coaching a storied quarterback like Reilly, the 2015 Grey Cup MVP who hit career highs in 2017 in passing yards (5,830), passing touchdowns (30) and rushing TDs (12) while leading the Eskimos to the western final, has been career-altering for Maksymic.
“Having a player like Mike certainly makes my job a lot easier. It makes me a lot better coach when you’ve got a player of his calibre,” Maksymic said. “I love working with him. He’s a great guy on the field and off the field. We really have a strong relationship and to see the success that he’s had has been awesome but that’s totally a credit to him and the work and hours he puts in and the way he’s able to execute on game day.
"Like the award says, he’s been better than anybody else in the league."
Training camp kicks off May 19 and it’s a big year for the Eskimos with Edmonton hosting the 106th Grey Cup at Commonwealth Stadium on Nov. 25.
“Everybody, including myself, would be lying to you if they said that’s something that’s not in the back of their mind,” Maksymic said. “What coach Maas has done and will continue to do, we were just in Vegas for our mini camp and our very first team meeting he got everybody together and he talked about the Grey Cup and he acknowledged that it's going to be in our back yard and what a sick feeling it would be if it was any other western team but us sitting in our locker room preparing for that Grey Cup, but after he was done with that he said he’s not going to mention it very much this year and I know he’s not. He’s kind of set the culture of taking it one day at a time and doing our best day in and day out and letting that stuff in November kind of take care of itself.
“It will definitely be in the back of our minds but it’s not something we’re going obsess over in the year.”
Maksymic, 31, is living the dream with the Eskimos after made his football debut as a receiver and back-up quarterback on the Bulldogs in Grade 11. His first big break as a coach was with the rebirth of the junior Bulldogs' program in 2005 and midway through the season then head coach Chad Hill promoted the Bellerose graduate to offensive coordinator.
After two seasons with the junior Bulldogs, former St. Albert resident and CFL head coach Tom Higgins pulled strings for Maksymic to serve as the water boy for the Calgary Stampeders at training camp and he quickly worked his way into the team’s video department for two years before going to Northern Arizona University in 2009 and 2010 and was a graduate assistant.
Maksymic returned to the CFL as the video coordinator for the Eskimos in 2011 and 2012 and offensive assistant in 2013 under head coach Kavis Reed before shifting to Ottawa through his connections with Rick Campbell.
“It’s been a ton of fun. It’s a great thing definitely to be working for the hometown team and sometimes it’s hard when you are working those 14 and 16 hour days to not get caught up in it and kind of lose perspective so to say but when I do have time to take a step back and kind of look at things and what I’ve done the last three years it’s sure exciting to be in the spot I am.”
