‘Winnipeg is the place’

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This article was published 02/11/2021 (1418 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the Winnipeg Blue Bombers add a new player to the roster, they’re asked to stand up, introduce themselves, and share a few things about their background with the rest of the locker room.

Kicker Sergio Castillo and defensive back Winston Rose went through that routine this week, but let’s not kid ourselves — it wasn’t necessary. Everyone knows exactly who these two former CFL all-stars are and what they bring to the table for a 10-1 Bombers team that has already clinched the West Division with three games left.

Coming off a bye week, Rose and Castillo, who are coming from the NFL, were on the field with the Bombers on Tuesday for the first time since signing deals to return to the Great White North.

“I genuinely feel the love here and that’s pretty much all you can ask for as a player,” said Rose, the CFL’s interception king in 2019 with the Bombers before joining the Cincinnati Bengals in 2020. The Bengals released Rose from their practice roster in September.

“Being somewhere where you’re wanted and loved? There’s nothing more that you want. You can go out there and just play. Just gonna play for the team, the city, and your brothers. Winnipeg is the place, man.”

After taking some time to see if another NFL team would come calling, Rose reached out to his agent to see if it’d be possible to return to Winnipeg. Rose, a 27-year-old from California with three CFL seasons on his resume, joins an already stacked defence that’s coming off of a game in which they shutout the B.C. Lions. In Tuesday’s practice at IG Field, Rose was working with the starters while cornerback Mike Jones mostly shadowed him and spent time playing with the scout team.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the next couple of games or for the rest of the season, but I just feel like where the team is at right now, we can go even higher,” Rose said.

“I’m saying we can do more, we can play better. And I’m saying that I just want to add my skill set to the team and then see where it falls in place after that.”

Similar to Rose, this is Castillo’s second stint in Blue and Gold, although his first one was way back in 2015 as a rookie. The Bombers signed Justin Medlock in 2016 and Castillo bounced around the league after that, but a sensational 2019 campaign where he connected on 41-of-45 field goal attempts with B.C. led to the New York Jets bringing him in.

Castillo ended up playing six games for the Jets in 2020 due to starting kicker Sam Ficken going down with an injury. The 31-year-old from Texas was seven-for-nine on field goals, including one from 55 yards out, through five games, with one of those misses coming on a blocked kick, but a disastrous performance in Week 14 where he missed three field goals against the Seattle Seahawks spelled the end of his NFL career. Castillo, who also played in the XFL for the Houston Roughnecks in 2020, had a workout for the Tennessee Titans in the summer prior to B.C. trading his rights to Winnipeg on Oct. 19.

“It’s the nature of the beast. But I think at the time, it’s very frustrating. As soon as the game was over, I called my girl… I told her “Start packing the bags. I know I’m gonna get cut.” But that’s just the game that we play. Just like when the highs come, you gotta roll with the punches when the bad times come,” Castillo said.

But Castillo — who said it was a “no-brainer” to join the Bombers as he hasn’t been on a team that’s won more than four or five games since his time at West Texas A&M — looks back fondly at his time with the Jets, even though things got off to a funny start. Castillo was working out at a gym in his home of Amarillo, Texas, when the Jets called him and asked if he could fly to New Jersey that evening for a tryout the following day.

“I do the workout, I sign the contract and I’m ready to go back to my room at the hotel because I’m exhausted. I didn’t sleep the night before because I was anxious, you know? But they told me we were going to have practice in about an hour and a half, go grab some lunch,” Castillo said.“So I’m chowing down on my food, I’m at the lunch room. And one of the lunch ladies, she comes over and we start to chatting. And she’s like ‘Spanish, you speak Spanish?’ I’m like yes, I do. And you know, we started talking Spanish. Now, she did not mean this in the wrong way at all, OK. She was like my grandma’s age, a sweet lady. And she asked me when I would start working with (them). So they thought I was gonna be, you know, working on the lunch. Like I said, she did not mean it the wrong way and after that they treated me like a son, having all my hot sauces ready for me.”

Surely, someone in Bomberland will supply Castillo with free hot sauce for life if he can solve the team’s kicking woes. Between Tyler Crapigna, Marc Liegghio and Ali Mourtada, the Bombers have made 16 of 28 field-goal attempts this season, which puts them at a dismal 57.1 per cent. At the beginning of Tuesday’s practice, Castillo drilled all five of his field goal tries, including a 55-yarder that bounced off the crossbar. Head coach Mike O’Shea wouldn’t say if Castillo, or Rose for that matter, would play this Saturday at home against the Montreal Alouettes (6-5). Mourtada is still on the team.

“In terms of the kickers, you know, we’re all human beings,” Castillo said. “So, when Medlock came in back in 2016, you know, I was, I was a little mad, obviously, right?… But you know, he took me under his wing. In life, you need a mentor and a mentee… I’m a little bit older now. So I’m taking that role now where I think it’s if we can all learn from each other and help each other out grow, you know, it’ll benefit the whole team.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.catwitter: @TaylorAllen31