Coach Snoop and coach Chucky both did a lot of winning, albeit at vastly different levels of football.
Matt (Snoop) Blokker, an ardent Oakland Raiders fan, laughed when asked about the coincidence of him returning to the B.C. Football Conference the same season Jon (Chucky) Gruden returned to the Raiders.
“We’ve missed Gruden, for sure,” said Blokker.
So has the BCFC missed Blokker. The winningest coach in league history, and second winningest in Canadian junior football history, has the Langley Rams at 3-3 after three seasons turning the fortunes of the Calgary Colts of the Prairie Football Conference.
Blokker brings his Rams into Westhills Stadium today at 4 p.m. for a key contest against the Westshore Rebels (3-2-1).
“The top five teams are within two points of each other, so this is a huge game,” said Blokker, noting only four teams will advance to the post-season.
“There’s a lot of parity in this league heading into Week 7.”
There was never much of that back when Blokker guided the Vancouver Island Raiders to seven BCFC championships, and three Canadian Bowl national titles, in eight seasons from 2006 to 2013. First place was pretty much locked up by the seventh week during the VI Raiders championship era.
“We did some amazing things, even after [eventual CFL star] Andrew Harris graduated,” said Blokker.
“But I’ve not really looked back. Maybe I will at some point. But when you are in coaching, you are always in the present. Right now, I am only concerned about Langley and building the Rams into a contender the same way I turned Calgary around.”
Blokker went to Calgary to build up the 2013 winless Colts and led them to the PFC championship game during all three seasons he was in Cowtown.
Blokker was named BCFC coach of the year four times and the Canadian junior football coach of the year twice in 2006 and 2013. He has 109 career regular-season wins and 26 playoff victories. No other coach in BCFC history is even close to those numbers of wins.
Is there a Blokker template he has used from the Raiders in Nanaimo to Colts in Calgary to now the Rams in Langley?
“I do things the same way wherever I coach,” said Blokker.
“I’m not going to change who I am.”
Any trip to the Island is literally old-home week for Blokker. He began his head coaching career by taking the Victoria Rebels to the BCFC Cullen Cup championship and Canadian Bowl championship game in 2003 before moving with the franchise to Nanaimo when it became the V.I. Raiders in 2004.
“The Island is special for me, there’s no doubt about that, and Victoria is where it all started,” said Blokker.
But there will be little sentiment on his part today because even the lineage has become muddled. The 2016 BCFC Cullen Cup champion and Canadian Bowl finalist Rebels, also defending 2017 BCFC regular-season champions, are much like the Cleveland Browns. The Rebels were reborn in 2004, after Blokker and the old franchise departed for Nanaimo to become the V.I. Raiders, much like a new Browns franchise was born after the old Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens.
But it’s not the historical record in which Blokker is interested. It’s the now and it’s the Rams heading into today’s game.
“The Rebels have great play-making receivers [Kaine Stevenson, D’Saun Greenaway, Cody Holmes, Nathan Falito] and a good running-back [Khaliel James],” said Blokker.
Blokker remembers the grinding Westshore running attack that helped the Rebels rally late for a 19-16 victory in Week 1 in Langley as James ran across for a major before QB Mason Brown hit Falito for a late game-winning touchdown.
“As good as their receivers are, we have to make them try to beat us in the air,” said Blokker.
In other BCFC games today, the Raiders (4-2) visit the winless Broncos (0-6) in Kamloops and Valley Huskers (4-2) are in Kelowna to take on the Okanagan Sun (3-2-1).
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