QB Nichols can’t bear to review Calgary game, looks forward to Esks

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This article was published 27/09/2016 (3296 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Matt Nichols’ silence said it all Tuesday afternoon.

“Honestly, I’d rather talk about Edmonton this week,” said the Winnipeg Blue Bombers starting quarterback when asked a question about Saturday’s loss to the Calgary Stampeders.

Don’t want to talk about it at all?

“No,” he said when prodded further. “Just moving past it. We feel we didn’t play our best football as an offence for 60 minutes. Right now, we’re focused on Edmonton and that’s our only focus right now.”

When asked if knew why fans and the media might want to know more about his team’s heartbreaking, last-second 36-34 loss at McMahon Stadium, Nichols reverted back to looking forward.

“If it comes down the line that we have to play this team again, we’ll talk about this game and whatever insight you want,” he said. “Right now, I’m focused on Edmonton.”

That next time won’t come until the playoffs, providing the 8-5 Bombers secure their spot over the coming weeks and both teams handle their business in such a way it brings them together at some point on the road to the Grey Cup game.

Meanwhile, not everyone shied away from facing the music.

Defensive end Jamaal Westerman fielded questions about why the team’s defence gave up 27 first-half points.

“We didn’t start how we wanted to start, from the top down, offence, defence, special teams, coaches,” he said. “We didn’t do what we needed to do in that first half. We let everybody down.”

The team’s first-half performance begs the question, how did a team, one riding a seven-game winning streak, a tidal wave of momentum and a hype train chugging along at full-speed all week, come out flat in a game that was, arguably, the biggest of the current CFL season?

“I feel we came out with the energy but when the game started it didn’t translate to the field,” said defensive back Kevin Fogg. “There aren’t any excuses.”

Fogg said he usually reviews each game on his own. While the defensive corps has had to digest the film over the last two days, Fogg has broken his routine, not wanting to re-live the first-half nightmare any more than necessary.

“It’s two totally different teams in each half. How in the heck did we play like that in the first half and then play like we did in the second against the same exact team and we’re the same exact players?” he said. “That first half was hard to watch. Our special teams assistant (Paul Boudreau) didn’t want to watch the game again. He told us that good teams get past losses like that and can move forward. It’s good that we can have that mindset.”

Tasked with the job of re-grouping his troops, head coach Mike O’Shea said the job is no different than if it followed any of the team’s four other losses this season, heartbreaker or not.

“It really isn’t,” he said. “They’re already on to Edmonton — yesterday. It was a day off for the players but a bunch of them were in watching tape on Edmonton, meeting together as players to look at the film and study their opponent.”

O’Shea said he didn’t have to address his team any different after the defeat, noting that the consistency within his squad has helped them this year.

Asked about his team’s flat start Saturday, O’Shea said it’s one of the great mysteries few, if any, coaches know the answer to.

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“The players know, too. And to a man, they’re going to investigate it themselves, what they need to do different to come out faster,” he said.

O’Shea’s mantra all year has been one game at a time. Even if their last loss came in the most spectacular fashion, it’s been squared away and left behind.

“They’re not wounded, it’s not like that,” he said. “It’s one loss.”

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @scottbilleck

Scott Billeck
Reporter

Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024.  Read more about Scott.

Every piece of reporting Scott 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.