Encouraging baby steps

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This article was published 08/06/2016 (3405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was the kind of all-too-familiar boneheaded play that a couple weeks from now would have Bombers Nation reaching for a stiff drink and wondering, “How long, O Lord, how long?”

But in the first quarter of the first pre-season game of the first night of pro football in this town in 2016, you could afford Wednesday night to look past a penalty that negated a 40-yard touchdown run by Winnipeg Blue Bombers tailback Andrew Harris to see instead the potential that underpinned it.

For starters, it was Harris at his very best, taking a short outlet pass from quarterback Drew Willy just beyond the line of scrimmage and then freestyling the rest of the way to the Montreal Alouettes end zone.

While Harris is a career running back, he has always been at his most dangerous as a receiver coming out of the backfield.

That’s a weapon the Bombers haven’t had for a couple seasons, and it’s a big reason why the club’s front office signed Harris in free agency over the winter and finally brought a native Winnipegger home from B.C.

And that’s the thing, see — Willy now has someone to dump the ball off to this season instead of taking all those hellacious hits he sustained over his first two seasons as the Bombers’ starter.

Yes, the Harris touchdown was called back, and the Bombers ended up getting nothing out of that drive.

But pre-season football is all about sifting the tea leaves for signs of what’s to come, and that one play suggested all by itself Winnipeg finally has the beginnings of solutions to two long-standing problems: their chronic inability to keep Willy upright, and their chronic inability to establish any credible offensive threat out of the backfield.

It’s baby steps, for sure. But for the first time in a while in these parts, the local pro football team is at least taking those baby steps in a forward direction.

A crowd of 23,334 that braved a pre-game downpour and threatening skies got its first look at a winter’s worth of changes at Investors Group Field and had to like what they saw from the new guys.

The Bombers’ second offensive series saw a pair of newcomers team up for Winnipeg’s first points of the season. First, it was Willy finding slotback Ryan Smith behind coverage — get used to reading that phrase this season — for a 32-yard gain. Two plays later, another Bombers free agent signing in Justin Medlock converted on a 47-yard field-goal attempt to back up his claim as the most accurate field-goal kicker in CFL history.

And so there it was yet again Wednesday night — the first signs of solutions to some of this team’s biggest problems in 2015. A big-play receiver who can stretch a defence? Winnipeg has one now. An accurate kicker who can hit from distance? Tick that box, too.

You couldn’t have ticked either of those boxes last season, and that was a big reason this team finished 5-13 and missed the playoffs for the fourth straight year.

Now look, no one wins the Grey Cup on the first night of the CFL pre-season, and there were lots of warts in this Bombers effort, too, beginning with — stop us if this sounds familiar — too many penalties.

In addition to the flag that negated the Harris TD, there was also another Bombers penalty in the second quarter that kept alive what proved to be a Montreal touchdown drive.

But the bottom line from Wednesday night is this: Winnipeg’s first-team new guys delivered as promised; the second and third teams outplayed the Als’ second and third teams; and, by night’s end, the Bombers as a unit delivered the rarest commodity of all at Investors Group Field — a victory.

Winnipeg went just 3-6 at home in 2015 and has a combined home record at Investors Group Field of just 7-20 since the joint opened in 2013.

To their everlasting credit, Bombers Nation has continued to come out through all of it.

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And against their better judgment, they’re willing to give this team the benefit of the doubt again in 2016, buying into all the off-season changes as evidence this team has finally got it right. You only had to look at all the new royal blue jerseys fans were wearing Wednesday night to see the level of the local buy-in.

But when you’ve been burned as many times as this fan base has, they will have this team on a very short leash this season.

The Bombers are on the clock, and a slow start would play very poorly at Portage and Main.

There’s work still to be done. A season’s worth. But the earliest evidence from Wednesday night suggests this team, finally, might actually be able to walk the talk.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @PaulWiecek