THE CANADIAN PRESS
EDMONTON — Danny Maciocia hung up his coaching headset Thursday, saying his Edmonton Eskimos are on the right track and that he’s tired of having his personal life pass him by.
"It’s time to move to the next phase of my football career," said Maciocia, who will now focus full time on his duties as the CFL team’s director of football operations.
Maciocia will now lead the search for his replacement.
He said the coaching grind took a toll on his wife and three young daughters.
"My nine-year-old has been playing soccer for three years. I’ve been to one game," he told reporters at a news conference at the Eskimos dressing room at Commonwealth Stadium.
"I’m not saying I’m going to be home every night for supper, but if I can make it two or three times a week, that will be two or three times more than I have a part of for the last while."
After missing the playoffs for two years under Maciocia, the Eskimos rebounded in 2008, finishing 10-8 and losing to the Montreal Alouettes in the Eastern Final.
Maciocia said the hunt for a successor will be extensive: "We’re going to research the football universe and make sure we get it right."
He said not he’s not looking for a coach schooled particularly in defence or offence, adding the new leader will be allowed to pick all his own assistants.
Early names being tossed around were current Eskimos offensive co-ordinator Rick Worman, Saskatchewan’s Richie Hall, and Doug Berry, a Maciocia friend recently fired from the head coaching job with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Worman, who was at the news conference, said: "I’ll just have to digest it a little bit and sit down with Danny and see what he comes up with for criteria and see if I fit that profile and if (the head job) is something that I want to move forward to."
The 41-year-old Montreal-born Maciocia joined the Eskimos from the Alouettes staff in 2002 as offensive co-ordinator. He spent the last four seasons as head coach, and during that time went from the top of the mountain to the valley of despair.
He coached the Eskimos to a Grey Cup win in 2005 only to go 7-11 the next year and become the coach of the first non-playoff Eskimos team in 34 years.
Things got worse in 2007. The team finished 5-12-1 — the worst showing in 40 years — and media critics and fans called for Maciocia’s head.
It got personal.
His daughter was teased and harassed in school. Fans mocked Maciocia’s stocky body shape. They called him Barney Rubble and suggested he coached like Joe Rockhead.
Maciocia said Thursday that things were so bad, he had to come back for 2008 and make it right.
"I took it personal, just like the organization took it personal.
"It was extremely important for me to get this thing turned around … and I’m at peace with myself right now knowing we can turn this thing over (to someone else).
Eskimos CEO Rick LeLacheur said the organization may have been partly responsible for Maciocia becoming a public pinata by raising expectations too high.
"One of our biggest mistakes was not admitting outwardly that we were in a rebuilding phase (in 2006-07)," he said.
Maciocia said the fan wrath and critical media comments didn’t drive him from the sidelines.
"That doesn’t affect me one bit," he said.
The criticism got to him early on, but he learned to turn it into a positive.
"You understand it comes with the territory and you say to yourself, `I’m in a place where people care, where people want to win."’
Maciocia’s was a reign of triumph, folly and contradiction.
LeLacheur and Maciocia preached patience and continuity but the roster was repeatedly overhauled year after year after the Grey Cup win. Seventeen assistant coaches came and went.
The team had to learn three offensive schemes in three years. Critics said the front office no longer drafted or scouted the second-tier talent needed to overcome the inevitable seasonal talent drain due to injuries.
The nadir came in 2007, when they lured Jacques Chapdelaine from the B.C. Lions to become assistant head coach and head of the offence with an informal promise to eventually become head coach.
He lasted 18 games before he was canned because, said LeLacheur, he wasn’t a good fit because his personality changed — a sort of Dr. Chapdelaine and Mr. Hyde.
But Maciocia dismissed Thursday a suggestion he was kicking himself upstairs to get out of the firing line should the Eskimos backslide in 2009.
"I could have done this last year," he said.
He can leave football and make more money somewhere else, he said, but prefers to stay in the CFL.
"I’m still living the dream."
