Bills QB Trent Edwards at camp.

BY PERRY LEFKO
sportsnet.ca

George Cortez has coached for more than 30 years, but he's like a rookie as he begins his first National Football League training camp.

Cortez, a veteran assistant coach in the Canadian Football League, including 11 with the Calgary Stampeders, is the new quarterbacks coach of the Buffalo Bills. He had a brief feel for the NFL life during the Bills' off-season workouts and mini-camps.

But the start of NFL training camps will be Cortez's chance to experience his new role with, as they say in the business, live bullets.

"It's a different challenge, an opportunity," he said recently while taking a break from his duties with the Bills to watch his former team play the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Ivor Wynne Stadium.

A mutual friend on the Bills' staff recommended Cortez to new head coach Chan Gailey. Cortez knew Gailey, but admittedly not very well. That said, Gailey thought enough of Cortez to give him the plumb job.

Cortez has either tutored or worked with the likes of quarterbacks Doug Flutie, Jeff Garcia, Dave Dickenson and Henry Burris, all of whom became stars in the CFL and later graduated to the NFL. In the case of Flutie and Garcia, they became starters down south.

One noticeable change Cortez has experienced in the NFL is the expanded staff, which has taken some of the tasks of his workload, such as breaking down film in the off-season.

"I haven't done any of it," he said. "There's just a huge amount of resources."

While there are differences from the NFL to the CFL, notably the smaller field and one less player, Cortez said there are similarities.

"I recognized some of the playbook," he said. "There's only x numbers of plays. Everybody in the league runs a similar offence…Football is football. A curl route is a curl route. The extra down is a big deal."

Cortez said unlike many people in the CFL game, he didn't have any NFL aspirations.

"We've been successful in Calgary," he said. "I've been there a long time. It's a great place to coach. I hadn't thought much about the NFL."

Soon he'll be spending countless hours every day living the life of a quarterbacks coach in the NFL.