EDMONTON — Jason Maas says the Esks’ offence won’t change much, it’ll just get faster.

The first-year head coach comes from the same offensive school of thought as Stephen McAdoo, last year’s Grey Cup-winning offensive coordinator who left this off-season to join Chris Jones in Saskatchewan. But while Edmonton’s attack will look the same philosophically, Maas wants a faster tempo.

“The system’s familiarity with our players will be the same,” Maas said at a season preview teleconference about his team’s offence. “The difference will be the tempo.

“We run an up-tempo offence so everything we do is strictly no-huddle, that’ll be the change.”

It’s no small change. Implementing a no-huddle offence certainly represents a challenge for an offence that last year emerged as one of the league’s most dominant, ranking second in the CFL with 359.6 yards per game and eventually playing a key role in the team’s victory in the 103rd Grey Cup Championship.

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With the Grey Cup Most Valuable Player Mike Reilly returning to lead the offence along with his top receivers Adarius Bowman and Derel Walker, Maas could have left things alone and built off that unit’s success of 2015.

So why change things? Because there’s always room to get better. Edmonton did not own the league’s top offence last season, an accomplishment that belongs to the Ottawa REDBLACKS — the very offence Maas coached himself.

“Am I resistant to [change] based on the fact they huddled last year and they were very good?” asked Maas. “No, because I felt like we were successful in Ottawa running a similar system, just making it faster.

“We feel like that can be an advantage for us with the types of players we have. They already know the system, now it’s just about making it quicker, taking the [opposing defence] and putting more pressure on them.

“There’s going to be nothing we’re worried about in those respects.”

The REDBLACKS led the CFL with 386.3 offensive yards per game and no one else was even close. Henry Burris was the league’s Most Outstanding Player at 40 years old, while four receivers went over 1,000 yards through the air.

They were also the only team that could consistently crack the code of the stingy Ticats’ defence, scoring 91 points over the last three head to head matchups (30 per game) including 79 (39.5 per game) in the regular season finale and Eastern Final.

Others around the league took notice, including the Eskimos’ Bowman, last year the CFL’s number two receiver.

“You can tire the defence down and that’s a huge thing,” said Bowman, “because I feel like I tell everybody about Hamilton’s defence – they always have momentum and energy. But if you look at last year, they always had trouble with Ottawa.

“A lot of teams had trouble with Ottawa.”

2015 Possession Statistics

TEAM OFF PLAYS DEF PLAYS TIME OF POSS REDBLACKS 1,124 (1st) 949 (1st) 33:10 (1st) Eskimos 1,099 (2nd) 964 (2nd) 31:38 (2nd)

While the players look to adapt to a faster-moving system, the biggest challenge for everyone involved is being consistent. There’s no ‘halfway’ when it comes to running the no-huddle — Maas and the players will have to be able to run his entire offence out of it.

Then there are questions like what if the offence struggles to move the football? And how will your own defence adapt the the quicker pace?

Maas was with the Argos in 2014 the year they missed the playoffs. That season the Boatmen started the year with some no-huddle, but with a young defence struggling to adapt and too many injuries on the offensive side of the ball, they got away from it and never really went back.

“That’s one of the challenges if you’re not very good at it,” said Maas. “You’ve basically got to be fully committed to it – that’s the bottom line.

“If you’re two and out a lot, your defence goes on the field,” he continued. “But if you stay on the field like we did last year, you end up controlling most of the game anyway and now you’re on the field more often than your defence is.”

That held true for the REDBLACKS last season, a team that led the league with the most offensive plays from scrimmage (1,124); the fewest defensive plays from scrimmage (949); the most first downs (434); and above all in time of possession (33:10).

Looking at the personnel at his disposal in Edmonton, there’s no reason Maas can’t accomplish similar results with a different group in 2016.

“The time of possession can still be in your favour even when you do the no-huddle,” said Maas. “I don’t look at it as a problem.

“You’ve just got to be committed to it, your players have to be committed to it,” he continued, “and the bottom line is you have to be able to run your whole entire offence through it – it can’t just be clips of your offence.”