Bombers seem to quit when they’re ahead — then lose

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/09/2019 (2183 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The good news is that by the end of the Blue Bombers’ game against the Montreal Alouettes, no one was talking about the Andrew Harris steroid fiasco anymore.

The bad news is that everyone was talking about the massive, record-breaking failure of the entire team instead.

You can learn a lot from a loss of this magnitude: surrendering a 24-point lead, and laying down for 21 points, late in the fourth quarter. It just comes down to whether you want to come to terms with the harsh realities it presents or not.

This team is much like a pro wrestling superstar without any finishing moves. No “people’s elbow,” no “sharp shooter,” and no “figure four leg lock,” to wrap up a match, and close out an opponent. The only “stone cold stunner” we tend to see are the looks on our faces when it all unravels in front of us. They have their opponent down on the mat, with their foot on their throat, and then all of a sudden have a crisis of conscience and offer them a Snapple and a cookie.

To say this team doesn’t have a killer instinct is a gross understatement. There is much talk about how many good guys are on this squad, and in this locker room, but maybe it’s time a few of them got swapped out for some vindictive sons of you-know-what who have no qualms running an opponent into the ground.

It is also painfully obvious that this team doesn’t know how to play with a lead. The bigger it is, the worse, and more agonizing it gets. They start playing not to lose. They don’t play to win. The play calling gets flat, conservative, and timid.

The best way to describe what happens when this team gets up big on an opponent, is to listen to late actor Chris Farley describe how he would lose a sale — or for our purposes, a lead — in the movie Tommy Boy.

“Let’s say I go into some guy’s office, let’s say he’s even remotely interested in buying something. Well, then I get all excited, i’m like Jo-Jo, the idiot circus-boy, with a pretty new pet. The pet is my possible sale. Oh, my pretty little pet. I love you! So I stroke it, and I pet it, and I massage it. I love it, I love my little naughty pet. You’re naughty. And then I take my naughty pet, and I go… I killed it! I killed my sale! That’s when I blow it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1EyN9xTK94

Insert the word “lead,” instead of “sale,” and the dearly departed Farley paints this portrait perfectly.

Of course there are multiple other theories that surface when you wave a white flag after only two quarters. It sounds absurd with the minimum expectations people have for professional athletes these days, but it’s also possible this team is gassed out in the final frame of the game. The players are responsible for their own conditioning, but if they aren’t staying on top of it, then collapses of this magnitude are inevitable. If there was ever a team that needed the football equivalent of a bag skate — on the daily — it looks to be this one.

It also looks as if the coaching staff consistently runs out of ideas, at halftime. There is no team in the CFL that game plans for the first two quarters better than the Bombers, but then they hit the wall, and slowly disintegrate. Innovation, creativity and deception, often tap out after the first 30 minutes, and are not to be seen again until the start of next week’s game.

The opposition spends halftime adjusting and fixing the myriad problems they had in the first two quarters. This team appears to spend more time divvying up orange slices than coming up with a plan and approach to finish out the third and fourth quarters.

Lastly, what does it say about the leadership on a football team, when you transition from a first half of nearly flawless play and execution, to one filled with follies, and that breaks records for futility? It always starts at the top, and if the leaders of this team aren’t pounding the table and demanding accountability after such an epic collapse, then there is no reason to think it can’t, and won’t, happen again.

 

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

Twitter: @DougBrown97