Thankfully, Esks, Ticats almost as bad

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/08/2013 (4485 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Look, there’s no sugar-coating this — things are bleak in Bomberland.

But are they hopeless? Not at all.

Indeed, if you’re one of those glass-half-full types looking for a reason not to give up on this woeful 2013 Blue Bombers season, you need look no further than the next six weeks of the CFL schedule to discern a path to redemption and, just maybe, the playoffs for the local pro football team.

Consider:

The Bombers are heading into the softest part of their schedule, with four of their next six games coming against Hamilton and Edmonton, who presently have a combined three wins between them (Hamilton is 2-4 and Edmonton has the same woeful record as Winnipeg at 1-5).

The bad news is, that sandwiched between the home-and-home series against Hamilton that begins this Friday at Investors Group Field and the home-and-home series versus Edmonton in September is a home-and-home series versus a Saskatchewan Roughriders team who’ve been beaten just once this season.

Still, if you accept that the four upcoming games against Edmonton and Hamilton are very winnable — yes, even for these sad-sack Bombers — then even a pair of losses to Saskatchewan would have Winnipeg potentially heading into late September with a 5-7 record.

Is that great? No, but it would be a far cry better than 1-5 and would put the playoffs very much in reach for a Bombers team that plays in a league where last year’s champions — the Toronto Argonauts — finished the regular season at just 9-9.

What’s more, the Bombers have the added advantage this season of playing in an East Division where both Hamilton and Montreal (who are also 2-4) have also struggled. As Bombers head coach Tim Burke pointed out earlier this week, someone is going to have to host the East Division semifinal this year and so it might as well be the Bombers.

So again — hopeless? No. But it looks increasingly like Winnipeg’s season is going to turn on what they do in the next six games and it is imperative that the winning begin immediately if the Bombers are going to keep hope alive.

“If we can play well enough to win these next few games, then we’d be right back in second or third place,” veteran slotback Terrence Edwards said Wednesday following the club’s final full practice in advance of Friday night’s tilt with the Ticats.

“We’ve still got a chance. The fans shouldn’t give up yet. Nobody on this team is just picking up a cheque — these people here really do care about winning and care about each other and care about this organization.”

Bombers linebacker Pierre-Luc Labbe said the fans in Winnipeg — and the taxpayers of this province — are owed better than what they’ve gotten so far from a Bombers team that is still winless in their new $200 million state-of-the-art home.

And Labbe described a sense or urgency within the team to begin repaying the debt in earnest.

“I feel like we owe the fans. Every player in the league envies us — nobody has a stadium like we have,” Labbe said. “And the bottom line is if we don’t start winning, they’re going to find new players who will.”

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That message — get it done or get out — was sent loud and clear by the club’s board of directors last week when the team jettisoned both its CEO and GM.

The timing of those dramatic moves was not coincidental. At the very highest levels of this organization, there is a sense that if anything is to be salvaged from this 2013 season, the turnaround needs to begin right now.

And if it doesn’t? The knives will be back out and there will be so much cutting, it will make a Saw movie look like Cinderella.

“You just have to focus right now on doing your job,” said running back Chad Simpson. “Because if you don’t do your job, you”ll be the next guy in the paper.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca