Back to the drawing board

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This article was published 04/10/2014 (4331 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — They lived it — every excruciatingly painful tortuous second of it.

And now the Winnipeg Blue Bombers will be forced to revisit Friday’s sloppy 42-20 loss to the Ottawa Redblacks over and over again.

In fact, it’s their homework assignment as part of the preparations for their Thanksgiving Monday visit to Edmonton to face the Eskimos.

Asked Friday which approach he took with his team after the loss — tough-love yelling and screaming or moral support arm-around-the-shoulder — Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea offered up the perfect take on where his bunch is after 14 games.

“I didn’t do either of those two things. We’re not at that point yet where we could just throw that tape away. As I said in there, if we had some other record — a much improved record — then we’d be tempted to not even bother with that. But we’re not good enough yet.

“We need to learn from our mistakes and keep on learning and keep on growing. So we need to inspect that tape very diligently. I asked the players to make sure they have watched it before they see it with the coaching staff so they have the answers before the coach asks them.

“It’s important they get it figured it out before they’re told.”

And when they gather again next week, the culprits will be many and the areas of concern growing. The Bombers were awful across the board and breaking down the many mistakes will keep the coaching staff up for hours, if not days.

“That’s why it’s 42-20, because it was messy all over the place,” said O’Shea. “It wasn’t any one phase. It got ugly on offence and defence. That’s why that score ends up like that, so lopsided. We just weren’t good overall.

“Not a very good game. Penalties, missed tackles, dropped balls… it was just overall not a very satisfying outing, that’s for sure.”

What O’Shea is interested to see now is how his team responds in the face of their worst performance of the season. The timing stinks, given their chase for a playoff spot, but they’ve also been undergoing a ton of self examination in the last few weeks during a five-game losing skid.

“We’ll see how they bounce back,” said O’Shea. “I look at these guys… these are the questions I’m going to get asked, about the locker-room. And I look at these guys in the locker-room and I don’t see guys that are quitting. This game ain’t for the faint of heart, right? These guys know that. I’ve always stood by the character of these guys. I’m sure they’re going to make it right.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait