Willy practises but will he play?

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This article was published 25/09/2014 (4086 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Call it practise, or call it Willy Watch: To Be Continued. Either way, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ No. 1 pivot was throwing heat again Wednesday afternoon.

Patience, though. It’s still not certain if quarterback Drew Willy will start Saturday’s game against the visiting Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

“We’ll wait to see how he feels tomorrow,” said head coach Mike O’Shea. “I think he pushed it today, and we’ll see if there’s any reaction tomorrow morning if he wakes up, any pain, limited function, whatever that is… If he regresses, then we’ll re-evaluate. So there’s no point in naming him the starter now. I don’t think he regressed, I thought he looked like he’s progressing.”

Willy looked fine in the closing reps of Wednesday’s practice, with little outward sign of soreness in the right shoulder he sprained almost two weeks ago. Maybe he was hiding it, though. O’Shea does think his starter has a high pain tolerance.

“Pain, to me, that doesn’t enter into it really,” O’Shea said. “You figure out how guys manage their own pain threshholds. Drew’s shown he manages his own pretty well.”

The media room at Investors Group Field was nearly empty Wednesday, as the usual coterie of cameras and reporters was largely pointed at the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.

And the team did not make quarterbacks available to media, a decision made earlier in the week. So how Willy really feels, well, fans will have to wait and see.

— — —

There is one player who is now definitely out for Saturday’s game, according to O’Shea.

‘Pain, to me, that doesn’t enter into it really. You figure out how guys manage their own pain threshholds. Drew’s shown he manages his own pretty well’

— Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea on No. 1 quarterback Drew Willy

And that is import O-lineman Cordaro Howard. Though the coach was still mum on what exactly ails him — “various whatnots,” he reaffirmed, the second day in a row — those whatnots add up to him not being able to play.

In his place, Devin Tyler is ready to come off the practice roster, and get his 31st CFL start in his favourite spot, right tackle.

Tyler landed in Winnipeg in late August after being sidelined with injury in Saskatchewan and being released after the sixth week of the season. This is his fourth season in the CFL and he said he picked up the offensive plan pretty easily.

“I got it,” said Tyler, a 6-7, 300-pound giant with a gentle voice. “The starting O-line is so good with communicating. I may know the play, but they’ll echo it and make their call so it just makes me feel secure in what I’m doing.”

If Willy does start, Tyler will know the man behind him.

The Temple alum played last season in Saskatchewan, started eight games and took lots of second-team reps in front of Willy.

Truth be told, he doesn’t see much change in the pivot from then to now. “That’s the funny thing, it’s the same thing,” Tyler said. “He was confident like a starter then… He just had that same poised demeanour, where he’s comfortable, confident. He made those plays in practice last year.”

By the way, Tyler has an interesting claim to fame. He’s one of the rare people who can say he shut down NBA superstar Kevin Durant.

Err, in football at least. Last New Year’s Eve, Tyler became the star of a viral video, showing Durant trying to stutter-step past him in a mock pass rush. Durant ended up on the ground while Tyler barely had to budge.

“(Durant) really thought he could get past me to the quarterback. I had to show him why I get paid to protect quarterbacks,” joked Tyler in a caption to his Instagram video.

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The whole exercise was all in good fun: Tyler and the Durant family are old friends, going back to their childhood in Washington, D.C.

“Their mother — I used to go to the post office with all the time — I knew their mother before I actually knew them,” Tyler said. “So we were real cool, and we basically grew up together. We called each other brothers, you know.”

And hey, don’t be shocked if you see the Oklahoma City Thunder star in Winnipeg sometime soon.

“On the bye week, we were together, and he was asking me about Winnipeg, how do I like it,” Tyler said. “I was telling him it’s good out here. I was trying to explain to him how big it is out here. He said he wants to come to a game, so maybe I can get him here.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.