Mike Miller, the well-travelled new head coach of the Toronto Argonauts, has standards in mind as he leads the team on the hunt for the 2026 Grey Cup after a disappointing campaign last year.
Miller was promoted from quarterbacks coach to head coach earlier this week after previous head coach Ryan Dinwiddie departed for the Ottawa Redblacks.
The 55-year-old appeared on First Up on TSN1050 on Thursday to discuss his standards for success, what he’s looking for out of his team and how he thinks the Argonauts can get back to competing.
“We need smart players that are accountable, and we always say champions do extra – that’s in the film room, on the practice field, in the weight room, studying,” Miller said. “If you always look at those guys, the one thing that jumps off the page at you is passion. Those guys are usually at the front, and we want to collect as many of those guys as we can.”
The Argonauts are looking to bounce back from a 5-13 season that saw them finish second worst in the entire CFL, only a game better than the Redblacks. That served as a major disappointment following a Grey Cup title in 2023.
“When you’re in this business long enough, you’re going to have tough seasons, and I think those same challenges are what teams face every year,” Miller said.
Roster turnover is at the forefront of the challenges Miller is expecting to face heading into next season.
“The chemistry can change each season, especially with the addition of draft picks [and] the departure and addition of free agents,” said Miller. “So we’re going to have to identify that veteran leadership early and have that standard message that we’re going to be accountable, we’re going to be disciplined, we’re going to want to play with respect and trust. And then, ultimately, in the staff as well as the players we just want to have great passion, relentless pursuit of what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re going to have detailed preparation and then it’s about the urgency of our execution.
“As I always say, this game, in the end, is always about physicality, so we are going to try to build a very physical football team on offence, defence and special teams, and I want our team to take great pride in our ability to hit, so that’s going to be a big focus for us moving forward.”
It’s a long list of goals to improve for a team that featured the worst defence in the league by a wide margin a year ago. The Argos’ 32.4 points per game allowed last year were more than two points per game worse than the next closest team.
Despite being a quarterbacks coach for the Argonauts, Miller does have defensive coaching experience to draw on as part of his coaching history.
He has some ideas of the identity the defence will have to take in order to be successful next season, with some inspiration from an NFL Hall of Fame coach whose staff he was a part of.
“We want a defence that’s always going to be attacking, and we want to dictate to the offence the flow of the game. We’re in meetings right now, and over the next few days we’re going to be going over the staff. So that’ll be a step-by-step process, but that’s kind of the philosophy that I’m going to look for,” Miller said.
“It’s something that I learned early under Bill Cowher and my days [with the Pittsburgh Steelers], and that’s the type of attacking defence that we want to employ here moving forward.”
Along with the CFL, where Miller has served as assistant head coach with the Montreal Alouettes, Miller has NCAA coaching experience at Robert Morris, Edinboro and Westminster (where he worked as a defensive coordinator in 2018), NFL coaching experience with the Pittsburgh Steelers (offensive quality control), Buffalo Bills (tight ends coach) and Arizona Cardinals (offensive coordinator) as well as time spent coaching overseas with the Berlin Thunder and in the XFL with the New York Guardians.
Given that extensive experience in different leagues and with different players, Miller feels confident and comfortable moving forward with the Argonauts.
His time with the Cardinals in the NFL – where he served as wide receivers coach when a trio of receivers went over 1,000 yards in 2008 (only the fifth time in NFL history that feat was accomplished) and served as passing game coordinator for a Super Bowl appearance in 2009 – is an experience he refers to that may help mould his Argonauts into a more formidable roster.
“These are guys (Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin, Steve Breaston) that came to work every day, as good as they were, they pushed every day and they wanted me to push them to be better. And that’s every detail from our techniques and our fundamentals to the understanding of the gameplan, and that’s what we’re always trying to find, you want to find those special people,” said Miller.
“In Pittsburgh, [other guys] that [jumped] off the page were Jerome Bettis, Troy Polamalu, Dermontti Dawson, Alan Faneca – these guys were Hall of Famers for a reason,” Miller said. “But it’s about character and you gotta have passion to get through the adversity and brace through the adversity, which is definitely in our game. It’s always ‘how do you respond from a good play and a bad play?’ Because we’re only as good as our next play.”
Miller, a native of Pittsburgh, keeps a quote in mind from a coach outside of football – former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle – that he is hoping to instill on the team.
“One thing … [Hurdle] always said was ‘I’m easy to please but I’m hard to satisfy,’” Miller said. “It’s always going to be about that next play, about improvement and working to get better.”