Simply the best

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/08/2011 (5208 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Leave the scoffing and arguing to fans in the league’s other seven cities. Here in Winnipeg, feel free to call your football team the best in the land.

While that may count for little in August, and while the true title-holder won’t be declared until late November, it is true today.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have climbed to the top of the CFL mountain and bellowed with all their might.Echoes of their shouted supremacy will reverberate for at least another week.

They are 5-1 and first in the East Division.

They are the only team in the CFL to have beaten the West leading Edmonton Eskimos.

They have the league’s top defence.

They have sold out their old but still rocking stadium two weeks in a row and a ticket to a Bombers game has become as hot as well, dare we say it, passage to a Jets game.

But for a missed field goal in the late stages of a lone loss to the Calgary Stampeders they’d be a perfect 6-0.

Yes, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are on a roll.

It’s very easy at this early stage of the season to win the argument that the Bombers are the class of Canadian football.

Actually, it’s not an argument.

It’s a statement of fact.

Not that there aren’t any blemishes on their backside, but with every passing week the Big Blue appear to get stronger.

Friday night’s 28-16 punchout of the Eskimos was a definitive beating and the Bombers left absolutely no doubt as to which was the better team on this night.

Winnipeg hit Edmonton with so many rights the visitors were begging for a left by the end of the scrap.

Eskimos rookie head coach Kavis Reed came into town without a loss and likely wondering what it would feel like to lose. If he was he got his answer — and it’s a lesson he won’t soon forget.

Opportunistic defence

Winnipeg was once again led by an opportunistic defence that stole the ball five times and held the vaunted Eskies offence to a paltry 16 points.

But it wasn’t all defence. Quarterback Buck Pierce had a sparkling game, completing 20 of 27 passes for 242 yards with two TDs and one interception. Running back Fred Reid came close to the century mark with 96 yards on the ground.

Winnipeg has lacked balance to date but this was a complete effort, the kind that leaves coaches smiling.

Speaking of coaching, while Reed was getting drummed, Bombers boss Paul LaPolice was enjoying his coming-out party. Besieged and maligned a season ago, Lapo won’t have to pay for his Slurpees this week, the ultimate tip of the cap round here.

LaPolice will play the even-keeled card, but his boss, GM Joe Mack, showed his hand late in the stages of Friday’s throwdown when he lost his composure ever so briefly. Mack went toe to toe with resident sultan of smack Jonathan Hefney as they bayed into the steamy Winnipeg night.

Mack and Hefney were screaming and pointing at each other and then in a moment of testosterone-fuelled joy, started slapping at one another’s chest.

Mack will be buttoned up again come Monday, but there’s no denying his moment of chest-thumping on this night.

If the Bombers held any advantage on the rest of the league in terms of surprise, those days are over.

No, there will be no sneaking up on anyone from here on out.

All of Canada has seen what this team has accomplished and word around the league will be “Hhow about those Bombers?” Followed quickly by “Now what do we do about beating them?”

That’s right, Winnipeg is now the team to beat in the CFL. Not Montreal, not Edmonton — Winnipeg.

That weight tugging on your back? That’s a target, ‘Peggers. And every team in the league will be gunning for your Blue crew.

Feels good, don’t it?

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

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Enjoy it while it lasts, because while these are lovely summer days, autumn is coming and that’s when it starts to really count.

In the meantime, bring it on, CFL.

Winnipeg’s welcome mat has disappeared.

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca