Brohm spends honeymoon with Bombers

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This article was published 14/04/2014 (4183 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRADENTON, FLA. — The second day of Brian Brohm’s honeymoon involved running for his life here Monday morning as large, violent men chased him around a parched field under a hot Florida sun.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback — and newlywed– finally arrived here at Bombers mini-camp Monday morning, a day after the rest of his teammates and just two days after he got married in Kentucky.

“My honeymoon is coming here to minicamp,” Brohm laughed with reporters here Monday. “My wife — I’m going to have to make it up to her later, so we put a few extra days on to our actual honeymoon coming up in a few weeks.”

So how’d that go over? “She’s a football wife,” Brohm grinned. “She knows my family is a football family — my brother’s a coach. The wives in our family kind of know they have to put up with that.”

Brohm’s wedding date was set long before the Bombers acquired him last winter in a trade with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Compounding the conflict, the Bombers then decided to hold their first ever mini-camp in Florida on the same weekend Brohm was supposed to be getting married.

Talk about a shotgun wedding. “I got married in Louisville. It was a big Catholic wedding — both families are Catholic. People came in from all over the country — it was just a big fun time. And then I left right after that — I was seeing some of the guests leave as I was leaving to come here to minicamp.”

With Brohm now here at the IMG Academy — where the Bombers are holding their annual spring mini-camp through Tuesday — Winnipeg now has their full complement of four quarterbacks on the field. Drew Willy, Max Hall and Robert Marve are the others.

“I thought it went well,” Brohm said of his Bombers debut. “I really didn’t get any meeting time — we met for about 15 minutes before this first practice this morning. I got in late last night. I was just kind of picking it up on the fly and luckily they were holding up some cards with the plays on it to help me out.

“But it was fun to get out here and throw some routes and really just get to know the coaches and this offence.”

Brohm, a second-round draft pick of the Green Bay Packers in 2008, spent time with the Packers and Buffalo Bills, as well as the Las Vegas Locomotives of the UFL before he spent all of last season on Hamilton’s injured list.

Meanwhile, Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea said Monday’s morning practice was a bit slow after two workouts on the opening day Sunday. “Today was a bit sluggish, I thought, but that’s to be expected. The first practice of the second day of any camp has a tendency to be like that. I’ve seen it too many times where it’s like that…

“They’re tired and it’s a shock to their system. These guys are getting a ton of reps, they’re doing so many 1-on-1’s, so many reps in skelly (skeleton practice)…What you’re looking for is guys who can fight through it and fight through it with a high level of skill. It’s not bad to put them under this kind of stress and pressure, but as a coaching staff you just have to recognize sometimes the body just doesn’t work that well.”

The Bombers still have one more practice here Monday afternoon and then one final session again Tuesday morning before camp breaks and everyone heads home. O’Shea said he expects at least 15 of the 55 players on the mini-camp roster will be invited to the club’s main training camp in Winnipeg in June.

One position still to be sorted out for the Bombers is place-kicker. The club will work out two prospects — Trey Kramer and Nebraska-product Brett Maher — Tuesday morning.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek