Chris Jones first learned about Zach Collaros through a mutual coaching colleague while he was in Toronto.

“He’s a very good player that we’ve known for a very long time, he’s been around us since 2012. I went and I looked and I watched some video and I was like ‘man this guy is a good player,'” Jones told CKRM in Regina.

“In fact, they were looking at him in the NFL as a potential defensive back too. He’s got that kind of toughness and mentality, to a fault that’s probably why he’s been nicked up lately. I’ve known him since then and I went back and I researched him. He was 41-1 in high school. He’s just a really, really fine football player. He’s got a lot of the quarterback intangibles: toughness, leadership, first one in the door last one to leave. That type guy, blue-collar.”

Jones has discussed a fresh pact with the Collaros camp.

“We’ve had conversations now that the deal’s gone down, we’ve had conversations with both he and his agent and it looks as if things are going to run smoothly and we should get a new deal put in place rather quickly,” Jones said.

The Riders head coach and general manager made it clear the starting quarterback job will not be handed to Collaros.

“Like I told Zach life is always a competition and we’ve got an awful good crew of quarterbacks and Brandon Bridge won some games for us this year and is on the cusp of being the every down guy, so it’s going to be a competition,” Jones explained.

“It’s not just one of these deals where Zach comes in as the better-known quarterback and played a little more job and it’s his job just to be in there. It’s going to be a competition and competition is a good thing in football.”

The trade appeared to come together quickly and Jones did lots of due diligence.

“A few days ago right prior to the New Year they called me and things started speeding up pretty quickly and I knew that we had the extra pick there in the second round,” Jones said.

“So I started doing some more digging and looking at his touchdown to interception ratio and looking at his win-loss record prior to him getting hurt against us in September of 2015, and it became evident that I felt strongly, especially after us knowing so much about him. I talked with Tommy Condell at length about him, I’ve talked to Scott Milanovich at length about him and they both absolutely loved the guy and think that he’s certainly a Grey Cup quarterback and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do I don’t care who is playing quarterback.”

Jones spoke with Collaros late Tuesday night after the deal had been agreed upon.

“I called him last night and he’s down in Mexico with his girlfriend, he’s very, very excited about getting started. He’s said that he’s never been in better shape in his life, he wants the playbook. I said enjoy your time down there in Mexico then come up there and do your media and then once you’ve been in town and everybody has met you, then at that point we’ll get the book to you,” Jones said. “He’s been in our offence so he knows the terminology, concepts that we use, so it should be a pretty seamless situation.”

As for what the deal means for veteran Kevin Glenn who was the primary starter in 2017…

“We got an opportunity to add a guy that we had a lot of information about that a lot of people that quite honestly know a lot more about playing quarterback and coaching quarterback than I do, they really like him,” Jones said.

“So we had the opportunity to get him rather inexpensively so we decided to go ahead and make the move. And I talked to KG today and I told him that we’ll take the next couple days to evaluate and then we’ll be back in touch with you.”