Loss in B.C. was a turning point for the now-dominant Blue Bombers

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This article was published 18/08/2017 (2952 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They’ve been good. At times this 2017 CFL season, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have even been very good.

But it wasn’t until the extraordinary events of Thursday night at Investors Group Field that we knew for certain that these Bombers are also good enough.

Good enough to do what no one else has done this season — beat the Edmonton Eskimos.

And, even more importantly, good enough to prove to everyone — and especially themselves — that they are finally able to get the better of the best in the West Division.

You know when the last time the Bombers could say that? Yeah, me neither.

Think back to the very best Bombers teams you can remember. Every single one had something in common– they dominated at home.

And the fact the Bombers can say it today after a gritty, gutsy and hugely entertaining 33-26 win over the Eskimos at IGF Thursday night is reason to believe that there is finally light at the end of the tunnel — and, for once, it’s not an oncoming train.

For all their wins this season against the woeful East Division — four of Winnipeg’s five wins heading into Thursday night had come against the East — it is a simple empirical fact that nothing good was going to happen for the Bombers or the championship-starved fans of River City until this team first proved they could handle the West Division’s biggest big boys.

Five times previously the Eskimos had travelled to Winnipeg to play the Bombers at Investors Group Field since the stadium opened in 2013. And all five times, the Eskimos left town with a win.

This wasn’t a monkey on the Bombers back — it was a gorilla. And it was made all the worse by the fact that in addition to having been winless at IGF against Edmonton, the Bombers have also never yet registered a win on the campus of the University of Manitoba against the West’s other heavyweight, the Calgary Stampeders.

Put it all together and heading into Thursday night the Bombers were a combined 0-11 against Teams Alberta in the history of IGF.

Well, Calgary still remains unfinished, and equally important, business for another day.

But if it’s true that you cannot be the best until you beat the best, the Eskimos previously unblemished 7-0 record coming into Winnipeg would suggest that if the Bombers aren’t now the premier team in the CFL, they’re doing a pretty good impression of one.

And it begins with a Winnipeg offence that has been superlative all season long, but which has never been better than on Thursday night.

Yes, the Eskimos are banged up right now — especially on defence — and with a whopping 16 players on the six-game injured list and another four on the one-game, they were a club that was more vulnerable this week than their unblemished record might have suggested at first glance.

But there were times Thursday night that the Bombers offence simply looked unstoppable.

QB Matt Nichols has been clutch in the fourth quarter all season long, but this one was nothing less than a four quarter dissection of the Edmonton defence.

Nichols was a superb 32-40 for 390 yards and a TD, and if there are still doubters out there about the man’s abilities, I’d love to know what else they need to see.

And then there is running back Andrew Harris, who put up 105 yards on the ground and 120 yards through the air against Edmonton and is now on pace to become the first player in CFL history to eclipse 1,000 yards in both rushing and receiving in a single season.

How good has Harris been this season? Think about this: only one player in league history has ever even reached 800 yards in both rushing and receiving in a single season.

True story: Bombers GM Kyle Walters, who has been nothing short of brilliant in resurrecting this team from the ashes of the Joe Mack era and painstakingly putting together this roster over the last three years, spent Thursday night on the Bombers sideline watching the game with his son.

The man is no doubt proud of his boy, but you had to figure he was also proud of his boys Thursday night.

Nichols? Walters traded for him when the Eskimos gave up on him, and then re-signed him last winter. Harris? Walters signed him as a free agent after the B.C. Lions gave up on him.

Kicker Justin Medlock? Receiver Darvin Adams? Linebacker Maurice Leggett? The offensive and defensive lines that both dominated the line of scrimmage against the Eskimos all night long?

They’re all Walters’ boys and the very best part of a Bombers team that might be the very best team in the CFL right now.

But talent is one thing and character is another and it says something about the latter quality in this team that they have not lost again since that disastrous fourth quarter collapse last month in Vancouver against the Lions.

Head coach Mike O’Shea’s decision in that game to fake a punt on 3rd and 15 deep in his own territory and late in the fourth quarter with his team in the lead cost the Bombers that game when they botched it. And in the fragile constructs of a football season, it was one of those moments that could have sent this team in a spiral from which they never recovered.

But to their everlasting credit, a team that has always said they loved playing for O’Shea proved it unequivocally, throwing the embattled coach on their backs in come-from-behind wins over Montreal and Ottawa in the ensuing two weeks, and then waxing Hamilton last week.

But it’s one thing to go on a run against teams from an East Division that is doing a pretty good impression of a bad Pop Warner circuit right now; it is quite another to hang a loss on a swaggering Edmonton outfit with, for my money, the best QB in the league at the controls.

If this is the Bombers team that finally ends this city’s 27-year Grey Cup drought, history may very well record that the drive to Portage and Main on the final Sunday in November actually began in Vancouver in Week 5 in the lowest moment of their season — and found a new gear in Week 9 with the win over Edmonton.

Thursday’s victory not only improved the Bombers season record to 6-2 (Winnipeg had a bye in Week 1), it also now gives them a 3-1 record at home in a stadium where they’ve never yet posted a winning regular-season record.

Think back to the very best Bombers teams you can remember. Every single one had something in common — they dominated at home.

And you got a glimpse Thursday night of just how dominating IGF can be. A crowd of 30,554 was a season-high and they were rewarded with a perfect Winnipeg summer night, a great game and a 50-50 pot just a few bucks shy of 400 grand thanks to a bold decision by CEO Wade Miller earlier in the week to seed the pot with $100,000.

Look, no one ever won the Grey Cup in August. A lot can still go wrong for these Bombers — and probably will.

There will be injuries. There will be missed opportunities. And there will be a defence that I still think gives up way too many yards to win a championship.

But on Thursday night, in a stadium where so much has gone so wrong for so long, everything went right — on and off the field — for one glorious evening.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek