Despite loss, Garbutt effective in season debut

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This article was published 23/07/2024 (433 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TyJuan Garbutt, who suited up for his first game of the season Friday, was a bright spot for the 2-5 Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Despite some offensive struggles, the Bombers’ defence has been consistent while fighting injury troubles — and despite the loss, holding the Saskatchewan Roughriders to 19 points on Friday deserves recognition.

Garbutt seemed to fit in with the squad right away, putting pressure on Riders quarterback Shea Patterson and making strategic plays with veteran Willie Jefferson.

“It’s kind of weird because I feel like in my head it wasn’t that good of a performance,” said Garbutt at practice Tuesday.

“When you don’t get the results you want, it really doesn’t matter how good you play. The good thing about it though is it was the first one, and that will always be the toughest one. Good thing about it was that I’m actually back on the field.”

The 25-year-old defensive end was injured in training camp last spring, playing his first game with the Bombers on the last game of the regular season against the Calgary Stampeders. After being injured again this pre-season, the Fredericksburg, Va., native is happy to be back making an impact on the Bombers.

“It’s good to be able to be out there, go work with my teammates, be out there and you know, just try to bring a spark from a position group that had a lot of changes this whole year,” said Garbutt.

“It felt good to be opposite of (Jefferson), be next to guys like (Jake Thomas) and (Jamal Woods), all those guys. Being able to sell out for them, they’re going to get that every game from me definitely.”

However, there’s still work to be done for the Bombers’ D-line which is hoping to play mistake-free football as the need for wins becomes increasingly important with each passing week.

“As a group, we just want to be able to worry about ourselves and do our job,” said Garbutt. “All 12 guys have one job, do that for every play and then we think the results will be in our favour if we do that.”

Garbutt had one defensive tackle in his season debut.

“He’s got a great combination of power and quickness, seems to have a really good understanding of how to beat the guy across from him,” said coach Mike O’Shea Tuesday of Garbutt.

“He’s learning the nuances and getting back to working with a group again.”

For Jefferson, the defensive end has now seen five pass rushers start opposite to him due to early season injuries.

“It’s been different,” said Jefferson on working with so many players to start the season.

“You’re used to getting a chemistry with the guys that you’re playing with. But when it’s always changing, so the chemistry is always changing, the lingo is always changing. You want to try to make things better for the other side, especially with it being younger guys… Just get them the confidence to just do what they’ve been doing in practice, do what they’ve learned in meetings and things they’ve seen on film.”

The Bombers, who will travel to Toronto to play the 3-3 Argos on Saturday hope to hold them to 19 points — or fewer — as quarterback Zach Collaros and the offence try to heat up again.

“We just need to get a win in the win column,” said Jefferson. “Just to get some momentum, if we can go in and play a good defensive game, it would be a big momentum boost.”

A win would bring some much-needed positive emotions to the team, especially after tensions ran high at the end the game against the Riders when Adam Bighill made a late hit on Patterson at the final whistle.

“Credit to Shea (Patterson) after the game,” said Bighill Tuesday.

“He said he made a mistake on the play. He should have let the ball go, should never take a hit in that situation. It seems like their head coach agrees and everyone who knows football would know that’s exactly the way the game’s played.”

Bighill, who has been a key part of the Bombers defence since 2018, hopes his unit can stay consistent in supporting the offence.

“We need to score one more than they do,” said the linebacker. “At the end of the day, we just got to keep giving our offence more chances, more opportunities, better field positions, more takeaways… We take a lot of responsibility and pride for helping offence being able to win games.”

zoe.pierce@freepress.mb.ca