Bombers ‘should’ beat up on Argos

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/10/2011 (5153 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With so many storylines in play during a dramatic 26-25 Winnipeg Blue Bombers victory over the Montreal Alouettes at Canad Inns Stadium Saturday afternoon, a lot of interesting stuff ended up on the cutting-room floor Saturday night.

It’s cleaning day:

— With the win over Montreal, the Bombers now have a remarkable 7-2 record in the East Division — which should be 8-2 by next weekend if all goes according to plan against a woeful 4-12 Toronto Argonauts team at Canad Inns Stadium on Friday night.

There’s a few basic ingredients to putting together a championship team — and topping the list is always the ability to take care of business in your own backyard and win those four-point games.

The Bombers have done that with remarkable efficiency this year — dispatching Hamilton in all three games between the two teams this season and going 2-1 against Montreal and 2-1 against Toronto so far.

Winnipeg’s reward has been well-earned — control of their own destiny the last two weeks of the regular season as they try to sew up the franchises’s first East Division title in 10 years.

— Speaking of clinching the East Division title, isn’t it remarkable how quickly it turned around Saturday night?

With the Als leading 25-10 at the end of the third quarter, it was looking like Montreal was about to clinch their fourth straight East Division title and have the luxury of cooling their jets and resting their wounded for the final two weeks of the regular season — leaving their principal rivals in Winnipeg to deal with nagging self-doubts from the inside of the franchise and hard questions from outside about how they’d let the division title slip away in the season’s second half.

Fifteen minutes of football later, the opposite was true. The doubts and hard questions about opportunities slipping away are now being directed towards the Alouettes and it’s the Bombers who are suddenly in the driver’s seat, with a magic number of two — any combination of Bombers wins or Montreal losses — to clinch the East title.

The schedule looks like this: Bombers at home to face Toronto this Friday and then in Calgary on Nov. 5 to close out the regular season against the Stampeders; the Als at home this Sunday to face Calgary and then in Vancouver the final weekend to face the B.C. Lions.

The Als do have one advantage should the games on the final weekend still mean something: Montreal plays B.C. on the evening of Nov. 5, after Winnipeg has played Calgary earlier that afternoon.

— A bit lost in Saturday night’s win was the fact it clinched at least second place in East for the Bombers, meaning no matter what happens the final two weeks of the regular season, the final football game ever to be played at Canad Inns Stadium will be a playoff game.

There is something very fitting about that.

— The 2011 edition of the Bombers have been maddeningly unpredictable, but they have also been wildly efficient in grinding out wins.

That efficiency is perhaps best observed in this stat: Winnipeg has scored just 11 points more than opponents have scored against them this season — a razor-thin margin of 386-375 — and yet they enjoy a 10-6 record.

To put that in context, the Alouettes, who also enjoy a 10-6 record, have outscored their opponents 487-393 this season — a margin of 94 points.

— The two longest winning streaks in the CFL came to an end within a couple hours of one another Saturday night.

First, it was the Bombers snapping Montreal’s four-game string. And then a couple of hours later in Hamilton, the Tiger-Cats stunned the Lions 42-10 to end the Lions’ win streak at eight games.

Edmonton is now the hottest team in the CFL, with a three-game win streak.

— There were a lot of boos raining down from the Canad Inns grandstands on the home team in the third quarter during Montreal’s 16-0 run — and there were a lot of empty seats in the fourth quarter as the Bombers put together a 16-0 run of their own to steal the win.

I’ll admit I thought the Bombers were brutal for three quarters and had no chance to pulling off a fourth-quarter upset. But the cacophany of actual boos still seemed a bit over the top — particularly given the huge third-quarter advantage Montreal was enjoying thanks to a gale force wind at their back and the fact Winnipeg would enjoy the same advantage the next quarter.

And the fourth-quarter quitters? Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were all trying to make the start of the hockey game downtown.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca