Lessons for the Blue Bombers from the Ottawa Redblacks

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This article was published 15/10/2015 (3733 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — So here’s an interesting question: How come an Ottawa Redblacks franchise that didn’t even exist two years ago is a bona fide Grey Cup contender at 8-6 while the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are still, well, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers?

If there is any conclusion to be drawn from what has occurred in the nation’s capital over 18 months, it’s that it doesn’t take long to build a serious contender in the CFL — if you know what you’re doing.

Assembled from nothing more than castoffs from other CFL teams, draft picks and free agent acquisitions, the brain trust of the expansion Redblacks has assembled a team from the ground up in less than 24 months that leads the league right now in many offensive categories and would surprise no one if they were still playing on the final Sunday of the season.

That’s less time than Bombers CEO Wade Miller and GM Kyle Walters have had to do the same job in Winnipeg, and the same amount of time as Mike O’Shea has had as Bombers head coach.

So again, how come the Redblacks could build something so good so quickly and the Bombers are still bumbling their way through another losing season, mired at 5-10 and in serious jeopardy of missing the playoffs for the fourth season in a row and sixth time in the last seven years?

It’s an uncomfortable question and one O’Shea wasn’t real keen to answer Thursday, shortly after his team arrived at TD Place in advance of facing the Redblacks tonight.

“That will be an off-season (question) to look at,” replied O’Shea. “I worry about our team. I worry about coaching our guys and talking about our systems. So to sit and analyze why they have improved the way they have seems pointless to me.”

But are there lessons for the Bombers in what Ottawa has done?

“I’m sure there will be,” said O’Shea. “But it’s not something I’m concerning myself with right now. We got enough going on here.”

While O’Shea isn’t concerning himself with it, his CEO has no choice. The Bombers issued a bizarre news release Thursday, announcing their new season-ticket sales campaign in which Miller also issued an apology of sorts to Bombers fans for the 2015 season, acknowledging he “understands fan frustration.”

Memo to Bombers: When the announcement of your new season-ticket campaign has to include an apology for the current season, you might want to take a long, hard look at how other teams are doing things. Immediately, if not sooner.

That long, hard look would do well to begin right in Ottawa, where the biggest — and most obvious difference — between the two teams this season is that Ottawa’s starting quarterback, Henry Burris, has stayed healthy and Winnipeg’s starter, Drew Willy, has not.

The Bombers lost a bidding war for Burris prior to last season and the Ottawa quarterback is having an MVP-calibre 2015 season at the age of 40.

Willy, on the other hand, has had an injury-riddled season in which he has started just seven games and left three of those early with injury.

Stumbling

So Ottawa just got lucky? Hardly. Beyond the health of their quarterback, Ottawa also made some brilliant personnel changes last winter.

After stumbling through a 2-16 inaugural season in 2014, Ottawa completely revamped its receiving corps, brought in a new offensive co-ordinator and made a key off-season addition to the offensive line in Sir Vincent Rogers.

As Burris sees it, those changes were all the existing core needed to go from chumps last season to potential champs this season.

“Last year, I did the same things I’m doing this year,” Burris said Thursday. “But now this year, I’ve got a better supporting cast and I’m in a system that has given me the marching orders on how to go out there and operate within this offence.

“And you’re starting to see the results come about.”

And it’s not just the Redblacks who have proven in recent seasons that it doesn’t take long to turn around a CFL team.

While it seems hard to believe now, the Edmonton Eskimos were in dire straits just as the Bombers were two seasons ago, finishing the 2013 season out of the playoffs with a record of 4-14 in a season in which the Bombers were just one game worse at 3-15.

Flash forward two years and the Eskimos under Chris Jones, who took over in Edmonton at the same time O’Shea took over in Winnipeg, are now the odds-on favourites to win the Grey Cup while the Bombers are still, again, the Bombers.

Winnipeg QB Matt Nichols spent the past five seasons in Edmonton before being traded to Winnipeg last month and had a front-row seat for the Eskimos turnaround. Like the turnaround in Ottawa, Nichols said the Eskimos made a handful of key additions to an existing core of talent and the whole immediately became greater than the sum of its parts.

“It was the attitude of the guys — everyone said enough was enough,” said Nichols. “They added a few pieces, obviously, but the core group of guys was the same from the 3-15 season to turning around and going to the Western final (in 2014).

“It was just guys growing together and sticking together.”

Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell said even when his team finished with just two wins last season, he never had any doubt the Redblacks could build a winner — and build it quickly.

“I thought our record didn’t reflect it last year but we thought we had a good core group of players we thought would be winners in this league,” said Campbell.

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“We felt just we needed to add a few playmakers and some guys who could step up and make plays for us and it would turn the tide.”

All of which returns us to the same question: How come Ottawa — and Edmonton, for that matter — could turn things around so quickly while the wait for a Grey Cup in Winnipeg looks likely to extend into its 26th year?

O’Shea promises he’ll look into that question — after another season has come and gone.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek