It was late Saturday night in the visitors’ locker room at McMahon Stadium in Calgary and one by one the Winnipeg Blue Bombers kept spitting out the same mantra, the only variation being the selection of curse words wrapped around that message.
The little things — basic execution stuff, mixed with the fundamentals and an attention to detail — ate them alive in a 28-27 loss to the Stampeders that was the club’s fourth setback in the last five games and makes the 3-0 start to the season seem like a lifetime ago.
It’s an offence that roared out to a 17-0 start but then couldn’t convert on a third-and-one from the Stampeder five-yard line in the second quarter and then got completely bogged down in the second half. Even with that, one more first down late in the game would have taken valuable seconds off the clock and possibly sealed a victory.
It’s a special teams unit that took two penalties in the second half, including a marginal block-in-the-back infraction by Tony Jones that wiped out a 39-yard punt return by Trey Vaval which would have set the Blue Bombers up on their 51 but instead back them up to their own six.
And it’s a defence that gave up a handful of dreaded explosion plays again, took a 40-yard interference penalty that led to another TD and then had Dedrick Mills run for 105 yards, including 65 in the second half.
One more positive play in amongst all that and the Blue Bombers could have exited southern Alberta with a critical win which would have tied them with Calgary with five wins and kept the Saskatchewan Roughriders in sight. Instead, this club looks every bit a .500 bunch at 4-4.
“Hard-fought game. Everybody showed up — offence, defence and special teams — and tried to make some plays,” said defensive end Willie Jefferson inside a quiet room afterward. “Like Coach O’Shea said in the breakdown, we just needed one or two more plays from the offence, defence, special teams. And then a couple penalties near the end of the game put us in bad starting position.
“It’s the small things at the end of the game. Papi — Serge (Castillo) — made a wonderful kick near the end of the game and then we’ve just got to go out there and stop them.”
ICYMI, here’s our Game Recap story from Saturday’s loss to the Stamps:
And what follows is the rest of this week’s UPON FURTHER REVIEW…
THREE NUMBERS WHICH STOOD OUT… after a second glance at the stats package, which can be found here:
1 The Blue Bombers led 23-16 at halftime and there were positives to think they could lock down a critical road win. Zach Collaros had gone 13-of-15 for 169 yards with a TD strike to Jerreth Sterns in the first half while Brady Oliveira had rushed for 56 yards on eight carries and already had 90 receiving yards on seven receptions.
Winnipeg had seven possessions in the first half ending with three field goals, two touchdowns — including a Chris Streveler sneak — a critical turnover on downs and one punt.
The second half, unfortunately, was the exact opposite. The Blue Bombers had six possessions in the final 30 minutes with five straight punts before Castillo’s 63-yard bomb of a field goal with 1:01 remaining. Four of those six possessions ended with Collaros being sacked and three were two-and-outs. But here’s the truly ugly number: by our math the Blue Bombers managed just 62 yards of net offence in the final 30 minutes.
Another telling number: Winnipeg’s longest play from scrimmage in the second half was an 18-yard run by Collaros on the final possession.
“We just sucked on offence in the second half,” said veteran guard Pat Neufeld. “We didn’t live up to the standard we talk about and for whatever reason we just couldn’t put together drives and get the ball into the end zone. They did a great job of stifling us but we’re still making mistakes at different spots all over the field on different series and it’s really hurting us.
“We’re not going to be able to spend a lot of time on this because we’ve got a short week coming up, but everyone has got to really start focussing on the minute details as to why things aren’t working and that’s usually the case with execution — if we’re not sharp in those details then it’s not going to work.
“We’re not even halfway through the year yet. There’s no worries or anything, it’s just we’ve got to really start digging in and making sure we’ve got the details covered.”
2 Vernon Adams, Jr. completed 17-of-24 passes for 300 yards and two more TDs on Saturday and in the three Stampeder wins this year against Winnipeg — the first three-game sweep since 2016 — completed 71.8 percent of his passes and had seven passing TDs against just one interception. He now has 19 career TDs against the the Blue Bombers, more than any other opponent.
The yardage of those seven TDs says everything, too, as they covered 43, 11, 37, 42, three, 78 and eight yards.
What was a marked improvement on Saturday for Winnipeg’s defence compared to the first two meetings was they limited Calgary to just 24 percent (4-of-17) on second-down conversions. Unfortunately, those conversions averaged 10.8 yards per play, and the Stamps averaged a gaudy 8.0 yards on first down.
“They got four shots on us,” said head coach Mike O’Shea. “We were in really good coverage, and the ball is perfectly placed. It’s just a battle and they came down with it a few times, but our guys were in really good position it’s just a matter that Vernon got a good ball off and the receivers made good plays.”
“Too many explosion plays again,” added halfback Evan Holm. “And we still had a chance to seal the game. We didn’t. There was some good stuff in there, too, from us but it’s just those explosion plays. We held them to field goals on certain drives, but it was three or four plays that really hurt us. Throughout the course of the game they see what you do — looking for things, looking for weaknesses — and it’s the little things like the communication before a snap. And maybe it’s two steps as a DB it’s two steps and (the receiver) gets the leverage on you.”
The challenge becomes steeper now with Terrell Bonds having left the game via a cart at halftime and on crutches afterward. The Blue Bombers finished the game with Trey Vaval at corner — he also replaced Jamal Parker, Jr. last week before he was injured — and have just Cam Allen, to this point primarily a safety, on the practice roster.
3 There was some confusion from fans after we tweeted out Saturday night that Castillo’s 63-yarder had tied the record for the longest in CFL history. For the record, Paul McCallum’s 63-yarder in 2001 was first recorded as a 62-yard make before it was confirmed to be a yard longer. See the chart below from the CFL Guide and Record Book.
What’s interesting is Castillo now has three of the five longest field goals in CFL history, and his bomb Saturday broke his own club record of 60, which he first set in Calgary a year ago and then tied a month later at Princess Auto Stadium.
FYI… Here’s O’Shea on his decision to challenge the block-in-the-back penalty on Jones, which was not upheld by the replay centre: “It’s at the line of scrimmage and it’s a double-team. I don’t know if it’s egregious. Is it a block in the back… it’s hard to tell. But when the players say they think it was clean you’ve got to challenge. It was a big play. I don’t know if that’s going to make a difference in the end. I would have burned my timeout at another time anyway and there’s nothing there to challenge after it. I’m not going to save it. When a player says they believe it was clean then you believe him.”… And O’Shea also said the decision to concede to kickoff singles in the first half was simply made to trade the point for 40 yards or so of field position rather than have Vaval field a kick at his own five-yard line. Ultimately, the Stamps did the same inside the final minute when a Castillo kickoff went into the end zone.
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 loss, we have it here with the condensed game:
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