{"id":231504,"date":"2025-10-22T09:06:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T09:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/231504\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T09:06:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T09:06:19","slug":"hogan-one-on-one-with-ryan-dinwiddie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/231504\/","title":{"rendered":"Hogan: One on One With Ryan Dinwiddie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2024 Toronto Argonauts season ended with a Grey Cup celebration. The 2025 season ended with a thud.<\/p>\n

The numbers speak for themselves, the most damning is a 5-13 record, the worst by far since 2019, the season prior to the beginning of the Michael Clemons\/Ryan Dinwiddie era.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the team gathered one final time, for exit meetings, physicals, and a team gathering where players, coaches, and staff members would hear from Dinwiddie and Clemons. To say the least, the feeling in the room was dramatically different from their final farewell 11 months ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was a season that nobody in the organization was prepared for. Expectations for the season were high, after all, the club was coming off a Grey Cup championship, and while the team was raided in the off-season via free agency, everyone was confident it had filled the void created by those departures.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Argonauts.ca sat down with Dinwiddie in his office to discuss a difficult season. He was open in his replies and accepting of what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u201d he admitted when asked how he was doing. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough season. We\u2019ve been through a lot of adversity. It\u2019s obviously not the finish that we wanted, probably not the start we wanted. We put ourselves in a tough spot starting 0-3, and we\u2019ve got to win more games at home (where they were 3-6). We\u2019ve got a long way to go, we obviously understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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One of the reasons Dinwiddie has earned the respect of the players is that he doesn\u2019t sugarcoat things. He\u2019s an exceptionally straight shooter who isn\u2019t afraid to point out the negatives but does so to make his team better. He\u2019s also not adverse to confessing when he feels he wasn\u2019t at his best.<\/p>\n

He admitted they need to get better in terms of players and coaching. The native of Elk Grove in Northern California says he and his coaching staff have to spend the off-season analyzing their schemes, their approach to practice, and how they teach and run their drills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe execution needs to clean up and that starts with me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That self-awareness resonates with his players and staff.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One thing that Dinwiddie was pleased with was that his players didn\u2019t start pointing fingers at each other when things didn\u2019t go their way. That can be an easy thing to do when a group used to winning starts losing, but the culture he\u2019s established stopped any seeds of dissension from germinating.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey stuck together,\u201d the coach explained. \u201cThat\u2019s important to winning football games. Obviously, that\u2019s not the case this year, but as far as sustained success, we have that in the locker room as far as our approach. I\u2019m very appreciative of the fight, but we\u2019ve got to find ways to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what are those ways?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be more explosive at times on offence, we\u2019ve got to be more physical there. Defensively we\u2019ve got to be a little bit more aggressive, I thought we lacked physicality there a little bit as far as dominating your approach and letting teams be a little bit fearful. There\u2019s a lot we\u2019ve got to look at and analyze.\u201d<\/p>\n

In talking to Dinwiddie, you\u2019d think the Argos were blown out of every game, though perhaps the beatdown in Calgary the night before was top of mind. The Argos were in virtually every game in 2025 but went 2-9 in games decided in the last three minutes and were 0-5 in games decided between 4-9 points.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look back at some of the losses we had,\u201d Dinwiddie recalled. \u201cThe one at Montreal (where they led 25-7 late in the third quarter but lost 26-25), Sask at home (where after tying the game on a last-minute TD and two-point conversion, Mario Alford returned the kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown) and Ottawa at home (where they had a 21 point lead in the first quarter). I look back at those games and if we could have some of them back we\u2019d be right around .500 and give us a chance to compete in the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dinwiddie then started talking about the jobs he and his staff did this year. He said they met for about an hour-and-a-half on Sunday, just before he sat down with Argonauts.ca, and talked about how they can improve.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about the players, but also we analyzed ourselves and what we can do differently,\u201d he explained. \u201cI think we\u2019ve got to have out thumbs on our players a little bit more. You just can\u2019t expect them to understand what the expectations are. I think each position coach needs to own their position group and find that identity within themselves and the group because that\u2019s your resume as a position coach. It doesn\u2019t matter who they are, they\u2019re yours and we\u2019ve got to find ways to get better there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The coach wasn\u2019t emotional in the free-flowing conversation. He was being very direct in his answers, which should not be construed as passing the buck. He knows that the bottom line is the record, and that it\u2019s the chef, not the sous-chefs that get the blame for a bad meal.<\/p>\n

But while he talked at length about how he and his staff have to improve, when asked about what job one in the off-season was, he was direct with his response.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoster,\u201d he said, meaning that the club must improve its talent level, before quickly adding, \u201cand coaching staff, where are we going to be? We\u2019ve got to sit down with Keith (MLSE President and CEO Keith Pelley) and see what\u2019s the best approach, what changes we need to make, and what things we need to do to get us back to where we were in years past.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously there are high expectations in the building,\u201d said the coach. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of success since I took this job. No one\u2019s more disappointed than me, it\u2019s tough, it\u2019s humbling, but at the same time, you can sit back and sulk about it and make excuses for it and that\u2019s not going to be the answer. We\u2019ve got to find answers. I look forward to working, you know me, I\u2019m always working, I have a lot of pride in this job. We\u2019ve got to do better for our fans and better for our ownership and find ways to get into the playoffs and do that collectively each year. We\u2019ve got to be more consistent; we\u2019ve been consistent for four years, but I want to be able to give us a chance to win the Grey Cup each year.\u201d<\/p>\n

It takes hard work to maintain that level of success, as prior to this year the club had reached the Eastern Final in each of Dinwiddie\u2019s four seasons, winning the Grey Cup twice in the last three years. The coach is committed to rolling up his sleeves and doing what\u2019s necessary to become a Grey Cup contender again.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the leader of the organization it starts with me. You can\u2019t waste a day and get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were some positives in 2025 to build around, but it will be a new-look Argonauts team in 2026, with the coach hoping to be playing in November rather than looking ahead to the following season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2024 Toronto Argonauts season ended with a Grey Cup celebration. The 2025 season ended with a thud.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-231504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}