Mosaic no longer a field of bad dreams for Bombers

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This article was published 29/06/2015 (3755 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With so many new players on the revamped Winnipeg Blue Bombers this season, the historic nature of Winnipeg’s 30-26 victory over the Saskatchewan Roughriders was lost on a lot of the men in the Bombers locker-room deep in the bowels of Regina’s Mosaic Field Saturday night.

But not defensive tackle Bryant Turner, who for five seasons lived the nightmare that was the Bombers at Mosaic.

So while his teammates scurried around him, quickly packing away their equipment so they could get to the airport charter home, Turner sat half-dressed on a stool in his locker with a grin, savouring the moment.

“This is just tremendous,” Turner said. “I feel like the younger guys don’t understand just how big this is to get a win in this building. This is my fifth year with the team and we’ve never won here. And besides that, we haven’t won here since 2004.

“So this is huge. This is a big accomplishment. And this is something we can feed off, something we can gain some momentum from. What we did here tonight affirms for the players in this room that what we’re doing is working and we need to keep doing it exactly as we have been.

“I think this is big, really big. Not just heading into next week, but for the rest of the season.”

On the opposite side of the Bombers locker-room sat another very large and very contented man, centre Dominic Picard.

Picard has been a veteran of the Bombers-Riders wars even longer than Turner — he’s in his 10th CFL season. And he also has a different perspective than Turner, having played for both the Bombers and the Riders over the years.

But what Picard and Turner agreed on was a gritty win authored in the most hostile stadium in the CFL was precisely the kind of character-building moment a young team can build upon.

‘This is just tremendous. I feel like the younger guys don’t understand just how big this is to get a win in this building’

— Bryant Turner

“This was a big challenge for us,” said Picard, “and we answered the bell. We knew those guys over there were going to be fired up tonight and we knew we were going to have to be physical and get off the ball.

“This is something we can build on.”

If there was one singular key to the Bombers victory it was perhaps the play of the revamped offensive line Picard anchors. While QB Drew Willy’s numbers jumped off the page — 22-of-25, 325 yards, and three TDs — and the play of the Bombers “Thunder and Lightning” running back duo of Cameron Marshall and Paris Cotton was the talk of Twitter, all of it was made possible by a big game out of the Bombers hogs.

Facing arguably the most ferocious defensive front-four in the CFL, the Bombers O-line yielded just one sack, gave Willy time to throw all night and carved the holes that gave Cotton and Marshall room to get downfield and shed the attempted tackles that led to Winnipeg’s biggest gains on this night.

“Up front, we took over, especially at the end,” said Picard. “And we showed the character and the attitude that we’ve got up front. I think we showed what the 2015 Bombers offensive line is all about.”

‘This was a big challenge for us, and we answered the bell’

— new Bombers centre, and former Roughrider, Dominic Picard

No one has ever won a Grey Cup in Week 1 of an 18-game CFL regular season. And there were some cracks in the Bombers’ effort that were papered over by the final score, beginning with the 212 yards in rushing the Bombers gave up.

Those big yards were reminiscent of the porous Bombers run defence that killed this team in 2014 and Turner, for one, said the final result Saturday doesn’t mean the Bombers’ run defence gets a pass.

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“Of course it matters — it’s a couple hundred yards and that’s way too many yards on the ground,” said Turner. “That is something we definitely need to look at and we obviously need to prepare better for next week.”

Indeed, they do. The Bombers have a short week of practice before they play Thursday night at home against a Hamilton Tiger-Cats team that will have some things of their own to prove after losing their opener Friday on a last-second field goal in Calgary.

But, basking in the glow of a big win for his team, Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea didn’t want to talk about his run defence Saturday night. Asked if all those Riders’ yards on the ground bothered him, O’Shea shot back (with a smile on his face): “No, what bothers me is you asked that after a good win…

“The purpose of playing football with three phases is having one more point than the opponent… And at the end, it’s a big win, a good team win. Every phase stepped up when they had to, so I’m not going to talk about that.”

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