Let’s rewind a tad here and venture inside the Winnipeg Blue Bombers locker room late Friday night for a snapshot of a scene that says absolutely everything about this club right now…
The doors to the place swing open and the first steps bring us immediately into the defensive end of the room. The music is blaring with the volume cranked to 11 and there is the laughing and jocularity that comes after every win.
The Ws are hard to come by in this league, remember, and the defence had its fingerprints all over the 17-16 win over the Saskatchewan Roughriders — regardless of whom the opposition decided to leave home.
Then take a few more steps further into the clubhouse toward the offensive end of the room and it was walking from a frat party into a funeral home.
There was no laughing. No jocularity.
Yes, while the Blue Bombers locked down a playoff spot with the results Friday night — the win over Saskatchewan, coupled with Edmonton’s loss to B.C. — there was a lot to be desired with the offensive output.
And that’s being kind.
As TSN’s Milt Stegall — Blue Bomber royalty — said Friday night: “This win was so ugly the scoreboard tried to look away.”
“A lot to fix. A LOT to fix on offence,” said veteran centre Chris Kolankowski. “Shout out to the defence — they had them punting all the fourth quarter and most of the second half. The offence, we just have to do better. We have to find ways to improve, find ways to play a cleaner game. I don’t think the issue was physicality or will, it just wasn’t clean enough.
“It’s everyone taking turns making mistakes. It felt like on the field 11 people are doing well and one person was messing up. We took turns doing that and that’s not winning football. We got out of it with a win, so that’s good. But there’s a lot to work on and we’ve got a lot of work to do this week.”
Here’s where things are so perplexing with the offence — frustrating is the better word, perhaps, especially for those in the huddle and those watching:
Winnipeg averaged 385.8 yards in its 3-0 start and then just two games ago threw up 514 net yards of offence in the 40-3 win over Hamilton. Since then — the loss in Edmonton and Friday’s win over the Roughriders — everything just feels so, well, difficult.
“There’s flashes,” said Kolankowski. “Every play there’s someone doing something really good. It’s just cleaning up. It’s not simple. It’s not easy. But it’s fixable.
“We just all have to focus, take a collective deep breath and focus on one play at a time. We can’t let things compound and turn into a snowball mistake effect of mistakes.”
All that said, the level of frustration in the offensive end of the room — remember, this came after a win — was palpable. Zach Collaros said there was nothing to like about the offensive performance, a notion echoed by Brady Oliveira.
Asked to weigh in on all that frustration, head coach Mike O’Shea offered this in his post-game media session:
“I don’t think that is a bad thing. I don’t want to see them hold on to that frustration, I want to see how they come in (Saturday). I want to make sure they’re in the right mindset to learn, because there’s a lot to learn tomorrow. Tonight… enjoy it. We got two points, we handled our business — whatever it looked like, we handled it, had the outcome we needed and so enjoy it. Enjoy your teammates. That’s a part of it.
“And, trust me, they’ll talk about the plays they want to have back, they’ll rehash all that stuff. Some guys are going to go home and at three in the morning and watch it. Some guys might go home right now and watch it — they won’t be able to sleep until they have the answers as to what went on.
“So me it’s a tough question to answer. To me, it’s what do they look like tomorrow.”
ICYMI, our Game Recap is here:
And what follows is the rest of this week’s Upon Further Review…
LET’S NOT PAINT THE PICTURE THAT EVERYONE ON ‘D’ WAS CELEBRATING, EITHER… because as we visited dime back Redha Kramdi after the game his frustration was high, too.
Yes, the Blue Bombers defence limited Saskatchewan to just 169 yards offence — and, yes, the Riders left a bunch of offensive regulars in Regina — but not everyone was feeling the good vibes afterward.
“That was expected out of us,” said Kramdi. “We gave up stuff we shouldn’t have and that’s unacceptable. Also, coming onto the field for that first series, JY (defensive coordinator Jordan Younger) always tries to give us his thoughts on what they’re going to try to do. He told us, ‘Don’t be surprised if they throw it deep with a shot play’ and so to allow that to happen, it’s pissing me off, to be honest.
“We left a couple plays there that should have been there, myself included. In these type of games you need to be at your best, especially with the situation we are in and knowing that they’re playing with their back up (QB) and then their third stringer on the field. We could have played better and given our offence better field position.
“We preach throughout the season that, ‘We’re going to be all right and we need to keep working’. At some point we need to stop saying, ‘We’re going to be all right’ because suddenly the season will be over, and we’ll be home watching the playoffs on our couches. Honestly, as a group — and pardon my language — but we need to get our s–t together. This is unacceptable. We shouldn’t be struggling as we did as a team. We need to play way cleaner football.” — Redha Kramdi
A GOOD SIDEBAR STORY — EVEN FOR THE OFFENCE — WAS THE WORK OF GAVIN COBB… who was filling in for injured receiver Nic Demski.
Cobb caught all four of his targets — including the club’s first offensive snap of the game — for 44 yards. Not Demski numbers, but a solid effort.
“I’m just excited and happy I got to contribute this week,” said Cobb. “It’s a lot more fun playing than it is watching. Our offence has a lot to clean up, but as far as the team goes, it wasn’t pretty, but we got it done.
“It was nice to touch the football again and then it became, ‘All right, we’re back. I’m here. I’m in the flow of things and now we’re playing football.’”
The status of Demski for Saturday’s regular season finale against the Montreal Alouettes is still to be determined, and we’ll get a better picture when the club returns to practice on Monday.
“Obviously Nic plays a huge role in our offence, but they wouldn’t put me in a position like that if they didn’t think I could get the job done,” Cobb said. “I believe in myself. People might want me to be Nic Demski, but I’m Gavin Cobb. I can give you my best Nic Demski impersonation but at the end of the day I have to be myself and play football the way I do, too.”
ONE MORE FROM O’SHEA WHEN ASKED IF HE WAS… discouraged with the offensive performance — he called it ‘sloppy’ — at this stage of the season:
“I don’t get discouraged easily. I’m here when they come into the building. I’m here when they leave the building. I witness all the great work they put in together, the extra work. I witness the camaraderie… all that stuff. I won’t every be disappointed in these guys — I’m disappointed for them at times, but I’ll never be disappointed in them.
“They put in so much damn work you just want more for them.”
THREE NUMBERS WHICH STOOD OUT… after a second glance at the stats package, which can be found here:
1 Over the first half of the season — a stretch where there were a ton of changes in the Blue Bombers secondary — Winnipeg’s defence was surrendering 292.2 yards passing per game.
Over the last eight games, that number has dropped significantly to 236.6. Some critics will push back at that number pointing to the Roughriders resting Trevor Harris and using both Jake Maier and Jack Doan Friday night. But in that recent number there’s also a 406-yard passing effort by Ottawa’s Dru Brown a few weeks back that was ballooned with some garbage time yards late as the Blue Bombers backed off on the last drive.
2 A number to add to the offensive frustration… Oliveira finished with 16 rushes for 75 yards and added three catches for 29 yards. Decent numbers. But 10 of those carries came in the first half and then on the first two possessions of the second half.
Yet, after that — from the 8:48 mark of the third quarter — he didn’t have another touch until inside the final three minutes, with 2:54 remaining as he got busy to help move the offence into position for Sergio Castillo’s walk-off game-winning field goal.
Over that stretch, FYI, the Blue Bombers had five possessions where he didn’t get his mitts on the ball.
3 A salute to Jake Thomas, who played in his 222 career regular season game as a Blue Bomber on Friday, moving him past Stan Mikawos into fourth place in franchise history in that department. Only punter Bob Cameron (394 from 1980-2002), placekicker Troy Westwood (293 from 1991-2007) and right tackle Chris Walby (249 from 1981-96) played more.
One more note: Linebacker Tony Jones finished with six tackles to give him an even 100 with one game to play. He becomes just the seventh Blue Bomber in franchise history to hit the century mark after Greg Battle and Barrin Simpson (both of whom did it twice), along with Adam Bighill, Khalil Bass, Henoc Muamba and K.D. Williams.
The club record for most tackles in a season is held by Simpson, who had 112 in 2007.
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 over the Riders, we have it here with the condensed game: