New D-lineman hops plane, sinks nose into Blue playbook

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2016 (3324 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Thursday night, Brandon Tennant was working out in a gym in Montreal. Friday morning, he was in a Winnipeg Blue Bombers practice jersey at Investors Group Field.

“I love it,” Tennant said after Friday morning’s practice. “It happened really, really fast — a ‘bam, bam, bam’ type of thing. (The Bombers) phoned last night around 6 p.m. and I was on the plane by 8:30 p.m.”

The University of Laval product and Saskatchewan Roughriders’ draft pick in 2015 will suit up for the Bombers against his former team in Sunday’s Labour Day Classic in Regina.

The club signed the 6-2, 305-pounder to replace injured D-lineman Jake Thomas, out indefinitely with a lower-body injury.

It will be Tennant’s first game action in more than a year after he dislocated his shoulder part-way through his rookie season with the Riders. It’s been a long road of rehab with little in the way of football, other than a couple of workouts with other CFL teams earlier this season.

With little time until he’s thrown to the wolves, Tennant plans to be a bookworm.

“I have to have my nose in the playbook,” he said. “I hope to be able to assimilate everything really fast and perform at 100 per cent.”

Head coach Mike O’Shea is confident the 25-year-old can perform out of the gate, pointing to his experience with Laval’s winning program.

“He’s a guy that we saw going through the draft process,” O’Shea said. “It looks like he’s trimmed down (since then), which means he’s been working hard and he comes from that Laval program… they have a winning culture.”

And he’ll have some help as well.

“Jake Thomas, right off the bat, said, ‘Just give him to me and we’ll get him ready,’” O’Shea said.

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Winning the turnover battle over the last four weeks has become the gold standard for the Bombers, heavily influencing their four-game winning streak.

While the Bombers have come to expect their ballhawks snatching the football back here and there, O’Shea knows that well could run dry at some point.

“I say that every week,” he said. “We got to be able to win tight games, too, when the turnover margin is not like that.”

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Friday marked the one-year anniversary of Matt Nichols’ arrival in Winnipeg via trade last season with the Edmonton Eskimos.

Nichols said he’s found a home in Winnipeg, noting his growth as a player after playing several games last season and winning his four starts this season at pivot for the Bombers.

Sunday, he takes the helm for the first time in the Labour Day Classic.

“I can just see a difference, the game seems slower, better decision making,” he said. “I know I went through some growing pains last year learning a little bit of what you can and can’t get away with and being able to trust my eyes. Usually, when things look cloudy it’s because they are… try not to force it into places. This will be another good experience for me.”

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @scottbilleck

Scott Billeck
Reporter

Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024.  Read more about Scott.

Every piece of reporting Scott produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.