The wild Blue yonder

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This article was published 09/09/2014 (4274 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 30-24 loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Sunday’s Banjo Bowl was the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ fourth defeat in their last five games, leaving them with a regular-season record of 6-5, last in the CFL’s West Division.

Free Press football writer Paul Wiecek interviewed Bombers GM Kyle Walters on Monday to find out what’s gone wrong and where the club goes from here. The following is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation:

WIECEK: Your team has gone 1-4 in the last five games after opening the season at 5-1. That would seem to suggest a serious regression and a downward spiral. How do you see it?

WALTERS: Wow, hard question off the start, eh? (laughs) I will start with this: Our goal — and I’ve said this all season long — is we want to put a competitive product on the field, game in and game out, that the fans can be proud of and with players that work their asses off. And I think we’ve done that through 11 games. Yeah, the last couple haven’t gone our way… But the difference is the games are tight into the fourth quarter. They were going our way earlier and lately they’ve gone against us. Things are evening out, which tends to happen in football.

WIECEK: Most fans coming into this season would have been pretty happy if a club that was 3-15 last year even doubled its wins to six under a new regime. But after the hot start, people got much higher expectations and the mood now seems to be that anything less than playoffs will be considered a disappointment in Bombers Nation. Is that fair?

WALTERS: We put a higher expectation on ourselves in-house than anyone does out there… We expect to go out and win every single game and that’s all we focus on. We started out fantastic at 5-1 and people should expect us to win.

WIECEK: You’ve given up over 800 yards rushing in the last five games and the run defence is getting worse, not better. Your head coach doesn’t think it’s a problem. How about you?

WALTERS: When you lose a football game, the coaches bury themselves in the office and look at everything that can help us win or improve. I trust emphatically our head coach has the pulse of the defensive staff and the offensive staff. And the area you bring up is no bigger concern than any of the other areas we’re focusing on when we lose a football game.

WIECEK: You, your head coach and your CEO are all self-proclaimed special-teams geeks. How do you account for the inconsistency and the game-changing breakdowns like we saw on Sunday?

WALTERS: I think our special teams before yesterday and in the last couple of weeks has actually kept us in games with some big plays. (Returner Troy) Stoudermire has been a big sparkplug for us and we’ve had a couple blocked punts and (kicker/punter) Lirim (Hajrullahu) has been solid. So I hope yesterday was just an anomaly… and two breakdowns in one day just skews what a good job those guys have been doing in recent weeks.

WIECEK: You’ve just come back from NFL camps. Is help on the way?

WALTERS: All the scouting guys will be up here Sept. 22 and practice-roster expansion starts early October. So we’ll have a good week of meetings with the staff and get on the same page. But there’s no quick fix and nobody is going to be riding in on a silver horse to save the day, if that’s the perception out there. The guys in-house are working hard and we’re close. That’s what everyone needs to understand — a couple penalties, a couple turnovers in the last few games and the outcomes would have been different.

WIECEK: Will Chris Matthews be a Bomber sooner than later?

WALTERS: Chris is still focussed on the NFL and so is his agent. And you can’t blame him — he’s close. He’s got interest from multiple teams down there — practice rosters, and Seattle is still talking to him. So he’s going to explore all NFL options before he even considers coming up to the CFL.

WIECEK: Your team is 1-4 against the West Division and five of your last seven games are against West Division opponents. Does that alarm you?

WALTERS: No, it doesn’t alarm me. You can look at it as a positive — we’re playing teams above us in the standings, which is what you want because you can treat it as a four-point swing. You have a chance to control your own destiny, which in sport is what you want.

WIECEK: Your head coach has impressed people with how he handled the good times. This is his first real adversity as a rookie head coach — how is he handling it?

WALTERS: The best thing about Mike (O’Shea) is he’s even-keeled and he’s strong in his beliefs. Whether we’re winning or losing, those beliefs aren’t going to change about what we need to do to be a championship team. All he’s focused on is winning Grey Cups and this is what we need and these are the kind of people we need. He’ll be fine because of the character he has and the beliefs he has. It will see him through the highs and lows.

WIECEK: How you sleeping these days?

WALTERS: It’s tough. When you go through a stretch like this… you look at yourself and say, ‘What can I do to help us win?’ And that’s what I’ve been doing. You lie in bed at night and think, ‘What can I do organizationally to help get us through this?’ You rack your brains. And that’s what I’ve been trying to instill in the players and coaches — before you start pointing fingers or worrying about refs or run defence or turnovers — what can each of us individually do differently or what can we improve on to make our team better?

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek