Bombers 5 storylines

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This article was published 24/07/2015 (3757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Five storylines to ponder entering tonight’s CFL game between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the host Edmonton Eskimos:

1. Not-so-special teams

Yes, Winnipeg Blue Bombers QB Drew Willy took a terrible time-count violation late in the fourth quarter Saturday. And yes, Willy threw a game-ending interception in the final minute of the 26-25 loss to the Calgary Stampeders at McMahon Stadium.

But it was the Bombers’ special teams — not Willy — that played the biggest role in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. A Troy Stoudermire punt-return fumble; a blocked punt returned for a Calgary TD; a missed convert and two missed field goals by Lirim Hajrullahu combined to turn a 16-0 Bombers lead into one of the more painful defeats this team has sustained in recent seasons.

All of which makes the special-teams unit — and how they respond to last week’s spanking in Calgary — one of the more compelling storylines heading into Commonwealth Stadium.

This is a team, remember, led by three guys in CEO Wade Miller, GM Kyle Walters and head coach Mike O’Shea, who each took immense pride in their own special-teams work in their playing days. Another performance like last week’s and those fellows aren’t going to hesitate to hand out some plane tickets.

2. Can Drew Willy recapture that fourth-quarter magic?

Willy has been the architect of some great game-winning drives late in the fourth quarter during his one-plus season with the Bombers, but he’s also helped this club lose a few games late in the final frame.

For every game-winning Willy TD pass to Julian Feoli-Gudino in the end zone of Stade Molson, there’s been a game-losing interception to Saskatchewan. And last week against Calgary, Willy had not one, but two chances in the final minutes of the game to set up the game-winner, and he failed both times.

A lot of football gets played in the final three minutes of the game in the CFL, and the teams that are still playing in November are the ones that have quarterbacks who rise to the occasion with the game on the line. The jury is still out on whether Willy is such a player, but there would be a certain symmetry to the Bombers QB leading a game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter at Commonwealth Stadium, where Winnipeg last won way back in 2006 on some of the most memorable late-game heroics in league history — Milt Stegall’s 100-yard game-winning TD on the final play of the game.

3. Dude, seriously, where’s your running game?

The Bombers ran for 145 yards in a Week 1 win over Saskatchewan, and they’ve run for just 218 yards combined in the three games since.

All that optimism around town after Week 1 about how the Bombers appeared to finally have the kind of running game that can compete in the bruising West Division has since evaporated into more of the same old — an ineffective running game that for the last three weeks has been statistically looking up at every team in the league with the exception of the Ottawa Redblacks.

A “Thunder and Lightning” tailback combination of Cameron Marshall and Paris Cotton — which looked so promising against Saskatchewan — has been more “partly cloudy and light rain” in the last three weeks. Marshall has carried the ball just 14 times for 45 yards — a paltry 3.2 yards per carry average — and whatever designs offensive co-ordinator Marcel Bellefeuille had of confusing defences by giving them two different running backs with two different running styles has been all but abandoned.

If winning games is about beating your opponent in every phase, the Bombers are going to need a better running game than they’ve had to beat an Eskimos running game led by Shakir Bell, who galloped for 144 yards in his CFL debut last week. It was, the CFL stats department says, one of the best tailback debuts ever in this league.

4. Keeping up with the Joneses

The Bombers head into Week 5 in a three-way tie for second place in the West with Edmonton and the B.C. Lions, but Winnipeg’s situation is more precarious than it might appear at first glance.

The 2-2 Bombers have played one more game than the 2-1 Esks and Lions and a loss to Edmonton this week would leave the Bombers looking up at Edmonton and having one less game still to play.

Yes, it’s still early, but it would be the beginning of a hole the Bombers don’t want to spend the rest of the season trying to dig out of.

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5. Winning at halftime equals winning

The Bombers are 2-0 this season when they’ve had the lead heading into halftime, but 0-2 when they’ve trailed or been tied heading into the intermission.

That’s the continuation of a trend under head coach Mike O’Shea, who is just 3-11 when his club is trailing at halftime.

That would seem to suggest these O’Shea teams win and lose games in the first half, although there is an interesting counterpoint to that suggestion: O’Shea is 4-1 as Bombers coach in games that are decided by four points or less, suggesting his in-game management in the second half is more than equal to the task.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek