Gut-check time for Bombers

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This article was published 15/09/2014 (4034 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER — His team had just lost their third straight, fifth in their last six and, oh yeah, their starting quarterback.

And so there was no point, really, in beating around the bush with the head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers late Saturday night. Because amid all the chaff of a once promising season now gone horribly wrong, the only question for the leader of this engimatic Winnipeg Blue Bombers team following a 26-9 loss to the B.C. Lions that still mattered was this:

Can you turn this nightmare around?

Mike O’Shea’s answer — as always — was predictable. Ever the optimist, O’Shea has become to the 2014 Bombers what that Iraqi public information minister was to the 2003 invasion, a man able to find reason for hope in even the most complete of defeats.

But while the sunny tone of O’Shea’s answer was once again predictable, it was the way he answered it that was interesting. His team might not turn it around, he seemed to suggest. But they’re going to die trying, he insisted.

And that might just have to be good enough for the rest of this year.

Just listen: “I’m pretty sure that Bombers fans have already realized the type of character we have on this team right now is such that they’re going to come back from bye week, they’re all going to be ready to work and we’re going to continue stepping on the field and playing a full 60 minutes.

“There’s never been a question of the effort out there with these guys. We’ve just got to coach them better to make less mistakes and put them in better positions to be successful. And that’s exactly why (fans) should be hopeful — because they understand the type of guys we have on this squad.

“There’s not going to be one guy in that locker-room who is going to quit.”

And that statement right there — no one is going to quit — is already more than can be said for a Bombers team that did precisely that at this time of year in each of the last two seasons, limping through the post-Labour Day schedule to embarassing finishing records of 3-15 in 2013 and 6-12 in 2012.

Now, that is going to be small comfort and consolation to some Bombers fans who got caught up in that quick 5-1 start the Bombers put together this season — wind assisted as it was by a schedule front-loaded with East Division patsies — and thought the turnaround a new front office is trying to orchestrate this year for this moribund franchise would be quicker and easier than anyone thought possible.

Alas, the 1-5 record that has followed that 5-1 start has laid bare just how naive it was to think turning around a team that is in its 24th year of a Grey Cup drought was going to be as simple as signing a new QB and shuffling a bunch of players.

But if there’s reason to hope — and this was precisely O’Shea’s point in the bowels of BC Place late Saturday night — it’s that while the Bombers cannot control the wins and losses that will come for the final third of the season, they can at least control the effort they put forth.

It is precisely for moments of extreme adversity such as the one this beleaguered Bombers team presently faces that the rookie triumvirate of CEO Wade Miller, GM Kyle Walters and O’Shea put this team together the way they did, emphasizing at every turn character and heart.

‘There’s never been a question of the effort out there with these guys. We’ve just got to coach them better to make less mistakes and put them in better positions to be successful’

— Bombers coach Mike O’Shea

You know why Korey Banks got jettisoned? Because he didn’t fit that mould. Ditto Jovon Johnson, Brandon Stewart and the rest of a former Bombers team that would be folding the tent at this point.

“I think we’ve got a good locker-room — a locker room that will do what it takes to win,” Bombers offensive tackle Glenn January said Saturday night. “The vibe feels as positive as it can with the record what it is right now.”

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Now, they count points, not vibe, in the CFL standings. And having missed the playoffs in four of the last five seasons, the Bombers loss to the Lions has Winnipeg on track to miss the post-season yet again this season, for the fifth time in six years.

They now trail the Lions by a win in the standings for the fourth and final playoff spot in the West Division. And what’s worse, the Lions not only also have a game in hand against the Bombers, that extra game is against one of those East Division patsies upon whom the Bombers feasted earlier this season.

But if you’re a Bombers fan looking for hope as this club heads into a bye week with nothing but uncertainty surrounding who will be their starting QB when they come back, it’s that this team was built with exactly this kind of adversity in mind.

If the best pro football teams are designed around the worst case scenario, the Bombers now find themselves in the midst of one. The going just got real tough — now we’ll see who gets going.

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