Inside the CFL: Former Als coach Jason Hogan thrives with Bombers

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WINNIPEG — In January, months into another football season, Jason Hogan’s phone rang and he was initially surprised when he saw the 204 area code.

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It was Buck Pierce, assistant head coach and offensive coordinator for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Hogan, running backs coach and assistant offensive coordinator at the Université de Montréal at the time, thought Pierce wanted information on a draft-eligible player from the Carabins who was headed to the Canadian college draft in May.

Instead, Pierce wondered if Hogan, a Rosemère native and former Alouettes assistant coach in 2016 and 2017, might be interested in joining the two-time defending Gray Cup champions as their running backs coach. After an interview with head coach Mike O’Shea, Hogan was added to the staff in late March, replacing Pete Costanza who joined the Toronto Argonauts.

“When Coach Osh calls, you have to listen,” said Hogan, 36, a former Université Laval quarterback who was part of some of the Als’ bleakest seasons but is now thriving with the 9-1. Bombers. “The first thing I told (O’Shea) on the phone was that I couldn’t believe he was talking to me.”

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While Hogan hadn’t once again closed the book on CFL coaching, he certainly had no complaints about his lot in life, having joined the Carabins in 2018, hired by head coach Danny Maciocia, now a general manager. of Als and interim head coach. .

Hogan joined the Als in 2015, working in the ticketing department while coordinating amateur soccer operations. He thought that he could lead to a coaching career. In fact, he was appointed quality control coach while helping Paul Charbonneau with the running backs. In 2017, Hogan moved to defense, coaching safeties under Noel Thorpe.

But the Als won just 10 of 36 games over those two seasons, never even smelling the playoffs, and Hogan wasn’t interviewed when Mike Sherman was named head coach in 2018.

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“That was a disappointment, but it’s the reality of professional sports,” Hogan said. “You just have to keep going and know that you have enough to help another team.

“I think there were too many moving parts,” Hogan added of his time with the organization. “I don’t think the guys on site have had enough… time together to really build anything. There were a lot of different guys in different places, players and coaches. It’s like there’s a new team every two weeks. We were moving staff around and there were different philosophies.

“In terms of my personal career, I was young and didn’t have much of a say in what we were doing. Not being a positional coach until my second year, not many knew me.”

It seemed natural for Hogan to learn the gist of college-level training, just as Anthony Calvillo had after wrestling as an assistant to Als.

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Hogan was initially on the Bombers’ radar by chance after participating in a virtual coaching clinic hosted by Charbonneau in April 2020, right after the COVID-19 outbreak. Hogan was asked to speak on running back, and Pierce was among those gathered for his tutorial.

“Do something and do it right,” Hogan said. “You never know who might be listening. The saying in football is that there is an interview every day. Do your best work and hopefully someone will be listening.

“I always felt like I had something to prove to myself, that sense of unfinished business,” he added. “I always wanted to do something in the CFL (again) and see where I could go.”

There are few better CFL landing spots than Winnipeg, the Bombers have become a model franchise under the guidance and continuity of GM Kyle Walters and O’Shea. And there may be no better place to train running backs than Winnipeg, where Canadian Andrew Harris thrived for years before joining the Argos as a free agent, replaced by the unimported Brady Oliveira.

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Oliveira, a Winnipeg native, said he was immediately impressed by the personable Hogan.

“We are human beings at the end of the day who make mistakes,” Oliveira said. “He really understands that. We have real conversations in our meeting room once we’re done. He is a very real person, which I appreciate. At the end of the day, this is bigger than football. I’m very fond of him, although I’ve only known him for a short time.

“He does the little things to make us better players and he takes the time to make us complete players.”

As the only addition to O’Shea’s staff, Hogan was careful not to ruffle feathers or try to fix what wasn’t broken. He believes in teaching the fundamentals, knowing that the recipe for success was already in place. “They have welcomed me with open arms.”

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And just as Calvillo returned to the Als’ coaching ranks this season, hired by former head coach Khari Jones, Hogan also said the door remains open going forward, knowing he is older and wiser now.

“Looking back…I spent way too much time…trying to figure out if I was going to come back instead of concentrating on my job,” Hogan said. “Don’t listen to the outside noise. If you do a good job… and it doesn’t fit here, it will fit somewhere else.”

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