Zach Collaros stood outside a raucous Winnipeg Blue Bombers locker room early Saturday night, a celebratory beer in one hand, and in a few words perfectly captured the mood of everyone in Bomberland after the club’s most-impressive ‘W’ of 2025:
“That was a lot of fun,” said the Blue Bombers QB1 with a grin. “It’s been a while. It was a fun one today.”
Yup, that just about sums things up wonderfully.
Winnipeg’s 40-3 evisceration of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Saturday — the East Division-leading Ticats, let’s remember — was a welcome reminder of what this bunch can do when it is playing complementary football, when Collaros starts and finishes a game, when the defence is at its stifling best and when Trey Vaval & Co. on special teams are adding some extra magic.
What’s just as important in all this is the team’s timing, what with the club heading into a bye week, with just three games remaining on the regular-season schedule and just 48 days until the 112th Grey Cup is held a few steps from their locker room at Princess Auto Stadium.
“That’s why we work hard, to have results like that,” said veteran centre Chris Kolankowski. “Trey got us started off the right way. Zach didn’t miss a beat coming back. We threw a ball a lot early and then in the fourth quarter and with the lead we were in position to leave it up to the O-line to run out the clock. Communication was a big part of that for us on the O-line against a good defensive front.
“Now it’s about finding a way to do it again in the next game. It’s not going to be easy and this doesn’t mean we can do it again the next time. We’ve really got to grind every single week. I hope everyone appreciates that.”
“It’s one win,” added head coach Mike O’Shea. “We’re not sweating when we lose one and we’re not crowning ourselves when we win one. Let’s just understand the work that went into it and try and not just repeat that work but try to a little bit more.
“… That was a pretty neat three-phase game in terms of how clean they were. I know they took a few penalties, but the execution… when we watch that back as coaches, we’ll be very pleased with the execution and the players should be, too. And when you get all three phases humming, that’s what’s possible. Do I think they’re all going to look like that? Yeah, I sure as hell hope so. And it’s a great indicator of what you can do if you play really clean, high-level execution, physical, if you do all the things that we know over time equates to winning it can look like this.
“I’m very pleased for the guys, especially going into a bye week, having something like that they can enjoy.”
And then a follow-up question to O’Shea asking how he was going to ‘nitpick that one, as coaches are always looking for something wrong’ served as a reminder that this bunch, especially given all its been through this year, certainly won’t get fat and sassy after the win over the Ticats.
“That’s the problem — if you choose to say ‘nitpick’ then that mindset shuts you down from learning,” he said. “If you’re in a growth mindset you take the corrections knowing that there’s never been a game of pro football that has been played perfectly, there’s things we can clean up. If you like the way this feels — and we all do — then let’s bury our heads in the corrections again.
“Let’s enjoy it for the week and then let’s get back to work and try and be better.”
ICYMI, here is our Game Recap from Saturday afternoon:
And what follows is the rest of this week’s Upon Further Review…
STANDINGS/SCHEDULE WATCH…
The CFL’s West Division playoff race always serves up some drama and the sprint to the regular-season finish line has become interesting all of a sudden with both teams atop the division — the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Calgary Stampeders — having each tumbled in recent weeks.
The Stamps have dropped three straight to fall to 8-6, while the Roughriders are now 10-4 after losing two in a row.
To that point, here are the remaining games for teams in the West, knowing that the fourth-place team is all but assured a crossover spot through the East Division with the third-place Toronto Argonauts at 5-10.
Stampeders (8-6)
Road (3): B.C., Oct. 4th; Hamilton, Oct. 11th; Edmonton, Oct. 24th
Home (1): Toronto, Oct. 18th
Blue Bombers (8-7)
Road (1): Edmonton, Oct. 11th
Home (2): Saskatchewan, Oct. 17th; Montreal, Oct. 25th
Lions (8-7)
Road (1): Saskatchewan, Oct. 25th
Home (2): Calgary, Oct. 4th; Edmonton, Oct. 17th
Elks (6-9)
Road (1): B.C., Oct. 17th
Home (2): Winnipeg, Oct. 11th; Calgary, Oct. 24th
THREE NUMBERS WHICH STOOD OUT… after a second glance at the stats package, which can be found here:
1 The offence and new offensive coordinator Jason Hogan have been under the microscope for large swaths of the ’25 season — and, especially, after the 54 yards passing a week ago — so fist bumps all around for their handiwork in Saturday’s win.
The Blue Bombers attack cranked out 514 yards net offence, the highest total since 526 in a win over Edmonton exactly one year earlier. Collaros was sensational in going 20-of-25 for 376 yards and a TD strike to Dillon Mitchell, with no interceptions, and the club rushed for 124 yards, including 98 from Brady Oliveira and 26 and three touchdowns from Chris Streveler.
Worth noting: that’s the fourth time since 2023 the offence has amassed 500 yards-plus of net offence.
On top of that, the three scores for Streveler were important given the criticism he faced after the win over Ottawa. No one wants a ‘W’ more than #17, and he was emotional after his third score and in the locker room afterward.
“A lot of emotions the past couple of weeks and a lot happened this week… it was an emotional week for me,” said Streveler. “So, to get to go out there with those guys and finish the game that way felt great. And to be able to let that emotion out with those guys… it makes me emotional right now because it means that much to me.
“This is what I love to do and to be able to end the game that way with the big boys after every that happened the last couple of weeks just felt so good.”
On a side note, how cool is this photo from Cameron Bartlett, which we used as our feature image in the Game Recap…
2 We tweeted this out during the game Saturday, but Vaval is making a serious case for himself as the CFL’s Most Outstanding Rookie, and Most Outstanding Special Teams Player, too. His 98-yard return of the opening kickoff for a touchdown was his fourth score this season — one off the club record of five, set by Keith Stokes in 2004. The CFL record, FYI, is six and was set by Hamilton’s Chris Williams in 2012 and so he’s in rarefied air already.
Vaval leads the CFL in punt return yardage with 831 and in missed field goal return yardage at 271, and now has 805 yards in kickoff return yards, which ranks fourth.
“He’s been terrific. He really has,” said O’Shea of Vaval. “I go back after training camp when we started talking about him — his desire to do it right and keep learning — and not just in the return game but in all facets of football defensively and if we need him as a cover guy — is very high for a young guy in his first real good go at it.
“So, when you’ve got a guy that’s coachable it makes coaching easy.”
3 The Blue Bombers were a +1 in the turnover differential — not turning the ball over at all and forcing a turnover on downs by Hamilton — and that’s significant. In Winnipeg’s eight wins this season the team has a +11 turnover differential and in the seven losses that number is a grotesque -19.
AND FINALLY… thanks for reading this far and for those who have made it to the bottom and want to see the video evidence of the win against the Ticats, we have it here with the condensed game: