Curses! Bad breaks, bad decisions derailing Bombers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2017 (2931 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Let’s get something straight right off the top — there is no such thing as a sports “curse.”

The reason the Boston Red Sox didn’t win a World Series for 86 years wasn’t because they stupidly traded Babe Ruth. It’s because they were an organizational laughingstock for generations (and had a first baseman who infamously couldn’t field a grounder).

The Chicago Cubs went 108 years between World Series titles not because of a billy goat but because they fielded bad teams year after year and had no motivation to get better because the suckers in Chicago continued to fill Wrigley Field every day.

Name a sports “curse” and I will name you a lousy organization, bad general manager, parsimonious ownership and/or easily duped fan base.

There are sound, evidentiary-based reasons underlying every championship drought that generally have everything to do with chronic mismanagement and absolutely nothing to do with magic.

All of which brings us to today’s topic — the freefalling Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Look, I get why Bombers fans might wonder whether a curse is to blame for a string of injuries in recent weeks that has beset this once promising team and that will, in the biggest game of the season, relegate starting QB Matt Nichols to the bench in Calgary this Friday night.

If you’ve spent any time following this team over the decades, it’s only natural that you might conclude there is something supernatural at play in the random events that always seem to pop up just in time to deny the Bombers a Grey Cup.

It’s always something with this Bombers team, isn’t it? To wit:

— Cruising to victory in the 2007 East Final, starting Bombers QB Kevin Glenn breaks his arm. Ryan Dinwiddie makes his first career CFL start for the Bombers in the Grey Cup the following week, with predictable results, a 23-19 loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders in a very sloppy — and winnable — game.

— The 2001 Bombers tie a CFL record with 12 straight wins during the regular season and are huge favourites against the 8-10 Calgary Stampeders in the Grey Cup, only to come apart in the big game and hand the Stamps a championship and Calgary QB — and Grey Cup MVP — Marcus Crandell the greatest moment of his otherwise undistinguished career.

— Matt Dunigan ties a CFL regular season record in 1993 with 36 touchdown passes, only to shred his Achilles tendon in Week 16 and force the Bombers to start Sammy “Son-in-law” Garza in the Grey Cup. Garza (head coach Cal Murphy’s son-in-law) throws an interception and the Bombers have a punt blocked and a kickoff fumbled — all in the game’s first 10 minutes — en route to a 33-23 loss to the Edmonton Eskimos.

And on and on it has gone for this club, year in and year out.

Perhaps the most maddening thing about a Bombers Grey Cup drought, which is looking increasingly like it is going to reach 27 years later this month, is that it continues despite what were — and are — some really good teams during that stretch.

And I would include the 2017 Bombers in that category. While we can quibble about whether this team ever had what it is going to take to knock off a Stampeders team, with a historically good defence, in the West Final, there is no doubting that for a huge swath of this season, the Bombers were basically the only team in the league with any chance of doing it.

I’d argue — and the standings would support — the Bombers were the second-best team in the CFL this season — until the leaves turned and the games started to really matter.

And it’s been a rolling-tire fire ever since. A season-ending injury to defensive end Jamaal Westerman opened floodgates that have sidelined for various periods receiver Weston Dressler and running back Timothy Flanders, ended the seasons of receiver Darvin Adams and linebacker Maurice Leggett, and now sidelined Nichols for the critical Calgary game, which would secure the Bombers a home playoff date with a victory.

That is a terrible series of bad breaks. But a curse? Hardly.

What you have right now is a team that was lacking the depth necessary to overcome those injuries.

Take the Flanders injury. I don’t accept the proposition — advanced by all kinds of wise guys in this town in recent weeks — that the loss of the Bombers backup running back was the biggest blow to this club, at least until Nichols went down last weekend with a suspected calf injury.

But if you do believe that, then that’s on GM Kyle Walters, not the football gods. Because ask any GM in the CFL — and I’ve talked to a lot of them over the years about this subject — and they will tell you the single easiest position to replace on a CFL team is import running back.

There are literally hundreds of unemployed running backs in the U.S. who are too undersized or underpowered for the NFL but who are a great fit up here in the CFL. You ever notice how some CFL teams seem to swap out their tailbacks weekly? That’s because they can.

And yet there was no one who could replace Flanders as the Bombers went into a tailspin, losing three of their last four games? Nobody? Really?

That’s not a curse, that’s mismanagement. And it’s made all the more disappointing because it sullies all the otherwise great work Walters did in assembling this team out of the ashes of the Joe Mack regime.

But that’s how it goes in the general manager game. You make headlines with trades and at the draft table and in free agency — and Walters has been better than average at all three. But just as often as not, you make — and break — your team with those unheralded depth moves no one notices until they’re saving your season.

Just look at the Eskimos, who have lost a historic number of players to injury this season and yet just kept plugging and playing through it all to the point where there’s a very good chance that by this time next week, it will be them, not the Bombers, who are hosting the West semifinal.

The Eskimos have had 86 different players play at least one down this season, 54 different players start at least one game and at their current pace, they will have lost more games to injury this CFL season than any other team in league history, with the exception of last year’s Saskatchewan Roughriders, according to the Edmonton Sun’s Terry Jones.

Cursed? Nope, Edmonton was just unlucky. But also smart, because they had a lot of depth to help them get through it.

And the Bombers? Well, we’re about to see their lack of depth exposed at the most important position on the field for the first time in 30 games.

Remember at the start of the season when head coach Mike O’Shea told anyone who would listen that Dominique Davis was the backup to Nichols this year? Well, after giving Davis the backup reps at practice all season long, O’Shea announced Wednesday that he is throwing in the towel on that plan and handing the keys to the offence to third-string guy Dan LeFevour for the biggest game of the year.

Who does that? Who proclaims a guy the backup before training camp even starts, practises a guy as the backup all season and then, when it finally matters, gives the start to the third-stringer who has had the fewest reps of all?

An incredibly stubborn man whose inability to admit mistakes has undermined this team for four seasons now, that’s who.

It’s not a curse when you shoot yourself in the foot. That’s just dumb.

And the only thing dumber than doing it once is doing it over and over again.

It’s not the Bombers who are cursed, it’s their fans — by a team that never seems to learn from its mistakes.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek