Win in finale cold comfort for Bombers

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This article was published 01/11/2014 (3993 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CALGARY — The odds, the oddsmakers and over a decade of history were weighted against them.

But with nothing left to play for but pride, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers stunned everyone but themselves here at snow-covered McMahon Stadium Saturday afternoon with an 18-13 victory over the league-leading Calgary Stampeders.

The win — in Winnipeg’s final game of the 2014 season — snapped a pair of very long, very uncomfortable Bombers losing streaks.

The more pressing of the two was the eight-game losing streak wrapped around Winnipeg’s neck coming into Saturday and the win over Calgary brought that to a merciful end, leaving the Bombers with a finishing record of 7-11.

But there was also the bigger picture at play Saturday as well — the win snapped a Bombers losing streak in Alberta that dated back to 2006 and a losing streak in Calgary that dated all the way back to 2002.

To put those two dates in context, consider this: Jean Chrétien still had a year left on his final term when the Bombers last won at McMahon Stadium, 35-20 on Oct. 18, 2002. And the iPhone was still a year away from being invented when Milt Stegall made that infamous last-play touchdown catch and run against the Edmonton Eskimos to give the Bombers what was until Saturday their last win in Alberta on July 20, 2006.

What’s more, the Bombers win came in a stadium in which the Stampeders had lost just once in 2014 — and just twice in the last two seasons — heading into Saturday.

And so put it all together and yeah, the Bombers were feeling pretty good Saturday night about a win that meant nothing in the standings but still meant a lot to them.

“We proved there’s still some fight in this team, there’s still some dog in this team and there’s no give-up whatsoever in this team,” said Bombers linebacker Johnny Sears. “The culture has changed. And it’s a great thing for this organization.”

So what’s it all mean?

Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea said he thought the win over Calgary — which was played almost entirely in a snowstorm and amid terrible field conditions — showed the character he always thought his team had but hadn’t been much on display through an eight-game losing streak.

But O’Shea also made clear one win on the last day of his team’s season over a Calgary team that made a lot of unforced errors doesn’t erase all the opportunities that were lost and mistakes that were made during that long losing streak.

“I’m not going to gloss over the last two months,” said O’Shea. “I believe we should be in the playoffs. And we’re not. We’re not where we needed to be and we didn’t do enough to get there.”

About that Bombers run defence (the final chapter)

The Bombers won on Saturday despite giving up a season-worst 214 rushing yards to Calgary, who on this day authored the pro-football rarity of having two running backs go over 100 yards in the same game in Jon Cornish and Matt Walter.

O’Shea — who has been roundly criticized this season for his team’s consistently poor run defence and his steadfast refusal to acknowledge it was a major contributing factor to his team’s troubles — seized on Saturday’s victory as evidence he was right all along.

“We still gave up a bunch of rushing yards but we managed to win,” said O’Shea. “And that maybe lends a bit more credence to the idea that rushing yards aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

Of course, it also doesn’t hurt if, while your opponent is rushing for 214 yards, they also turn the ball over six times.

So what now?

The Bombers were scheduled to fly home immediately following Saturday’s game and the players will be at Investors Group Field this morning, cleaning out their lockers and holding one final media availability before heading their separate ways for the off-season.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek

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