Loyal and stubborn to the end

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/11/2024 (299 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Mike O’Shea finally took his place behind the podium at Princess Auto Stadium, it had been five days since his heavily favoured Winnipeg Blue Bombers were blown out by the Toronto Argonauts, 41-24, in Sunday’s Grey Cup in Vancouver.

Having covered O’Shea on a full-time basis since the 2016 CFL season, a couple of years after he was hired as the Bombers head coach in 2014, there are a few things I’ve learned about him along the way.

At the top of the list, there are few, if any, coaches — in the CFL or otherwise — more caring or loyal to their players than O’Shea. He can put up a hard shell at times when interacting with the media, but anyone who has had the chance to interact with the veteran coach outside the blinding lights of TV cameras will assure you it’s a facade.

O’Shea is also one of the most stubborn people you’ll ever meet, the kind of person you’d never want to get into an argument with because he’s seemingly armed at every corner. Whether it’s pouncing on a specific word in a reporter’s question — “I wouldn’t ever say it that way” — or an outright refusal to admit when he’s wrong despite strong evidence to the contrary, O’Shea won’t back down on what he believes in.

It can be both honourable and maddening at the same time.

It’s for these very reasons I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear O’Shea staunchly defend the biggest of the many decisions he made on Sunday, the one that ultimately cost he and his team the Grey Cup.

By giving quarterback Zach Collaros the ball, despite his finger severely cut, stitched up and numb, making it hard to grip the ball, O’Shea chose heart over head and player over team, and it cost the Bombers big time.

As a refresher, the Bombers were trailing by four points when Collaros suffered a serious cut to the index finger of his throwing hand. He would later say that he could see the inside of the digit, which was quickly stitched up and frozen before a glove was placed over it for added grip.

When Collaros returned, the Bombers trailing by eight points midway through the fourth quarter, his first pass was a deep shot up the left sideline that was easily picked off, resulting in a field goal for Toronto. On Winnipeg’s next drive, Collaros was picked off again, this time the ball returned for a TD.

Not done there, and with the game now out of reach, Collaros was left in to throw yet another interception, which was returned deep into Winnipeg territory and led to another seven points for the visitors. Collaros remained in the game the rest of the way, with the Bombers scoring a mercy TD with fewer than 60 seconds remaining.

“Yeah, absolutely,” O’Shea said when asked if given another chance, would he handle Collaros the same way. “When you ask me that, that’s not even something I really thought about. He absolutely deserves every opportunity to lead this team.”

When I pressed him on it, asking since he would do it all over again, if he would expect different results given the severity of Collaros’ injury, O’Shea said he didn’t want to speculate.

“Do I wish it would have happened differently?” he asked rhetorically. “Yeah, everybody wants the outcome to be different.”

O’Shea noted he watched Collaros warm-up on the sidelines shortly upon his return and that some of his throws were “pretty damn good.” Argos head coach Ryan Dinwiddie said after the game the moment he saw Collaros warming up, seeing how he could barely throw a spiral, was the moment he knew his team was going to win.

I received different accounts from players, many of whom said it was obvious their QB was hurting. That doesn’t even account for Collaros, who when he first got back to the huddle, told his teammates that he couldn’t fully trust his hand and warned his receivers they would likely need to come back to the ball in case the pass was underthrown.

O’Shea dismissed that by suggesting they work on players coming back to the ball in every practice, then dug his heels in deeper.

“I think what’s going on here is we’re questioning…” O’Shea started, “We’re trying to find blame and fault when that’s nowhere in our DNA of how we built this eight, nine, 10 years ago.”

Therein lies the problem. The Bombers have turned into a near dynasty under O’Shea and his strict process, going to five consecutive Grey Cups and winning twice. It’s that same process that has led to O’Shea making decisions from the heart that have also cost the Bombers that prestigious moniker.

There’s no doubt Collaros is a warrior on the field and O’Shea owes him a lot for he and the club’s sustained success over the years. In this moment, though, O’Shea needed to think of the other 44 players and tell Collaros he couldn’t do it. When you have a coach who hasn’t even filed his own retirement papers as a player, that wasn’t ever going to happen and everyone on the sideline knew it, even if Collaros did say he could go.

That blind loyalty reared its ugly head earlier in the game when O’Shea tapped rookie Terry Wilson on the shoulder to replace Collaros despite attempting just one pass all season. Why the Bombers even bothered picking up Jake Dolegala, who has actually started and won CFL games, is beyond me.

“I’ve seen the greatness guys achieve if we let them. I’ve seen what happens over time, especially as football has gone the way it’s gone, how we refuse to let players be great in big moments,” O’Shea said. “I’m a firm believer in that we have to let our leaders be great. And not maybe our leaders, we have to let players, give them the opportunity, to be great.”

O’Shea corrected himself mid-sentence to include not just the leaders but everyone. After all, O’Shea talked routinely about how everyone is a starter and that they wouldn’t be in the building if they couldn’t help the team win.

Last season, it was linebacker Adam Bighill and receiver Dalton Schoen who O’Shea tried his best to will to greatness despite both still clearly reeling from serious injuries suffered weeks before. In 2022, O’Shea couldn’t deal with cutting Marc Liegghio and finding a new kicker despite mixed results in the regular season, only to watch Liegghio stumble in the Grey Cup.

“It’s difficult, because of the moment, it’s hard to really go back and figure out what went wrong. That’s why we have post-game meetings, and we show the reasons why we win and the reasons why we lose on a weekly basis,” the coach said. “Well, this is the one time we don’t. We don’t gather and watch this film together. And I imagine, as guys go through it, they’ll get more answers. And they can all ask whatever they want. Everybody down here has to be prepared for the answers.”

None more than O’Shea.

Jeff.Hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

X: @jeffkhamilton