Bombers fans need to put defeatist attitude to rest

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This article was published 02/10/2017 (2927 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When a football team hasn’t contended for a title in years — or won one in decades — there are always going to be more reasons to not believe than to believe. The burden of proof that things have finally turned the corner gets heavier the longer a drought lasts, and it can turn a fanbase into practised skeptics.

Which might be why, even at nine wins and three losses, two-thirds of the way through the regular season, many of us were still preoccupied with coming up with reasons why they might lose to the Edmonton Eskimos, instead of how they might win. It’s like having a failure complex that compels one to prepare for any one of the multiple ways a team can let you down. Call it a conditioned response when you’ve spent too much time around a franchise that has been disappointed in most conceivable ways since 1990.

For instance, going into Edmonton, instead of focusing on the disparity in win/loss records between the teams, and the victory in the previous meeting, or the fact that the Bombers had won eight of their last nine, the emphasis was always on what Edmonton might do to turn things around. Such as: now that Edmonton had a bye week, and a chance to get healthier, and to put a serious game plan together for the Bombers, how could they not win?

The Eskimos are a franchise steeped in championship lore, and losing six games in a row simply wasn’t plausible. They would be playing at home, and Winnipeg usually struggles out there, and they have Mike Reilly, the former Grey Cup MVP and fiercest of fierce competitors, and the Doogie Howser of coaching savants, Jason Maas, at the helm. How could this visiting football team not become complacent, achieving at this rate, and let their guard down against a team that needed the win much more than they did?

This defeatist scrutiny wasn’t just an Edmonton Eskimos, at-home thing either, it was an all-season thing. Even though the team had eleven wins under its belt in 2016, there have been plenty of teams in these parts that have followed up a winning playoff season with something capable of offending all five senses at once.

Winning in Saskatchewan to start the season? The Roughriders were terrible last year, so what does that prove? Then they lost to Calgary like we all knew they would, and beat an Eastern team. They then lost to B.C., which was a step backwards from sweeping them in the regular season last year, and needed a miracle and divine intervention to beat Montreal in the waning moments. They beat a RedBlack team that had a Henry Burris hangover and couldn’t finish games, and then they had us worried about going into Hamilton and winning a trap game against a winless opponent.

They won against an Eskimos team decimated by injury, needed overtime to beat Montreal, and then regressed to losing on Labour Day, just like always. A win in the Banjo Bowl highlighted the difficulties of any team winning two games in a row, and then the RedBlacks had a third-string quarterback at the helm.

You see how easy that was to dismiss and pick apart nine of those wins over the first 12 games?

Yet in this space, there was something about going on the road this week, into Edmonton, and winning convincingly, and in ways they previously hadn’t (largely defensively), against a contending team with a QB that is universally respected and with a winning record.

It’s high time for a differing, less cynical perspective. This team has crossed the threshold of being a winner 10 times already this season, no matter what has been thrown at them. They still might not win it all, but they’ve filtered out all of the doubting noises, and for the foreseeable future, this town once again has a dominant, and dynamic football team representing it, that is more sure of itself than we have been.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97