With or without Adams, Bombers’ secondary ready for Week 1 against Als

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This article was published 21/06/2016 (3395 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Johnny Adams stood on the sideline at practice Tuesday with his back to the field. To pass the time, Adams played catch with himself; up and down the ball went, spinning from one hand to the next, five or six times before boredom appeared to take over.

Behind him was the Bombers secondary — a unit Adams helped lead last season as a CFL rookie — fully engaged as they battled in a drill against Drew Willy and the first-team offence. Dressed in helmets and shoulder pads, they sprinted downfield and shadowed receivers and broke up passes, doing what defensive backs — healthy defensive backs — are expected to do.

Adams, coming off a year in which he tied for the league lead in interceptions with six, is expected to rest and find different ways to pass the time as best he can as he waits to be cleared for contact after sustaining a lower-body injury that has sidelined him since the second day of training camp.

When Adams will return is unclear. Earlier this week, head coach Mike O’Shea was cautiously optimistic, suggesting Adams might be back in time for Friday’s season-opener against the Montreal Alouettes.

“It’s going to come down to the wire whether he can play or not,” said O’Shea.

It’s hard to believe with only one full practice he’ll be ready.

The Bombers can’t afford to wait, nor have they. To fill the void at cornerback left by Adams, the Bombers will call on Kevin Fogg, one of a few new pieces in the secondary.

Also new are safety Macho Harris, who played the last four years in Saskatchewan with the Roughriders, and Julian Posey, who with just one CFL start with the Bombers — last year’s season-finale — will replace Demond Washington at halfback. Rounding out the group are two veterans in halfback Bruce Johnson and Chris Randle, who returns to cornerback after tearing an ACL last season at linebacker.

The number of new faces is not ideal, but it’s also not unusual. Pro football is a business, and with Winnipeg spending big on other parts of the team in the off-season, including upgrades to the defensive line and linebackers, they are left to work with what they have and be creative if and when injuries strike.

“There’s challenges every year,” said Richie Hall, the defensive co-ordinator. “We’ve moved some people around, there’s some new people there, but that’s what you encounter every year.”

The Bombers have won just 12 games in the past two seasons, creating a noticeable angst among the local fan base. Upgrades in almost every area over the off-season have only heightened the need to win now. For a successful turnaround, Winnipeg will need to be better everywhere, including in a secondary that hasn’t had much time to gel.

Harris admitted a 2½-week training camp was hardly enough time for a secondary to reach its full potential. It’s not that he hasn’t seen some good things — “The times when we are all on the same page, and gelling, it’s lights out” — but he knows the best is yet to come, even if he is confident heading into Week 1.

“We got a front seven that will get after the quarterback, handle the running game,” he said. “We need to be confident enough to handle the back end, because we know the guys up front are going to do their job.”

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The Bombers have had a taste of what the Alouettes offence can do — a unit led by veteran quarterback Kevin Glenn and a talented group of receivers, including S.J. Green, Duran Carter and Kenny Stafford. In the Bombers’ first pre-season game — a 36-13 win almost two weeks ago — Glenn exposed the vulnerability of the team’s secondary, completing 14 of 19 passes for 140 yards and a touchdown in just more than a quarter of play.

“We’ve been studying them,” said Randle of the Alouettes. “Even after watching film on them, we’re still preparing. We understand that Glenn likes to get the ball out quick because he likes to make his reads that way.”

It will take this kind of attention to detail, said Randle, if the Bombers’ secondary is going to be among the best in the CFL. It’s why when training camp first started, Randle and the rest of the veterans took it upon themselves to be the difference; setting a certain standard, whether it be in the classroom watching film or at practice, and one that preached team before personal success.

“We want to be playmakers back there but we want to be a fundamentally sound group,” he said. “As we set the standard everyone is rising to that standard. It’s given us momentum going into the season because everyone is on the same page.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.catwitter: @jeffkhamilton

Jeff Hamilton
Multimedia producer

Jeff Hamilton is a sports and investigative reporter. Jeff joined the Free Press newsroom in April 2015, and has been covering the local sports scene since graduating from Carleton University’s journalism program in 2012. Read more about Jeff.

Every piece of reporting Jeff 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.