‘There are other ways to impact the game’

Willie Jefferson figured out that he didn’t have to reach the backfield to impact a football game a long time ago.

The splash plays are nice — and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ star defensive end has made plenty of those, with 75 career sacks — but they aren’t the be-all of his job.

Earlier this week, Jefferson shared that that realization is a part of the maturation for every defensive lineman, especially the ones who earned their keep as sack masters in college.

“As a young guy, you have your specific skill set that got you here. Like when I came into the league as a young guy, I was strictly a pass rusher. But as time goes on… you want to put your stamp on the game in some (other) type of ways,” said Jefferson, who has 79 pass knockdowns for his career.

“It might not be a sack, it might not be a forced fumble, it might not be an interception, it might not be a tip ball, but you can always get in on the tackle, play hard, run the ball and just make a play that way. There are other ways to impact the game, other than the sack and forced fumble.”

Jefferson has accounted so far this season for one sack and six defensive tackles through four contests, which has come as a disappointment to those who scout box scores.

Expectations are high for Winnipeg’s pass rush — and Jefferson in particular — after the unit was bolstered by the addition of veteran James Vaughters in the off-season and returning defensive tackle Cam Lawson, who missed all of 2024 with a knee injury.

Despite fielding the No. 1 scoring defence for the fourth year in a row, it was clear the team needed more push from its defensive front after finishing last season dead last in sacks with 26.

Much of the production fell on Jefferson after running mate Jackson Jeffcoat retired, and the Bombers’ effort to patch fill Jeffcoat’s position with several younger pass rushers failed.

With Vaughters in the picture, the sky again appeared to be the limit for this reinvigorated group, but the numbers would suggest it’s been a slow start up front.

Winnipeg has the second-fewest sacks in the league (five) and is dead last in tackles for loss (three). Meanwhile, Vaughters, who has recorded eight defensive tackles, is still hunting for his first sack.

“You don’t get to playing as long as we’ve been playing by questioning your instincts and getting jumpy when you’re overthinking stuff. So I think it’s just a matter of just doing what we’ve been doing.”–James Vaughters

“You always want to affect the game as much as you can, but as a young guy, with that in mind, you might do things that might take you out of position on certain other plays where you just need to play the play and see what you see and play what you see,” said Vaughters, who has 21 career sacks in the CFL.

“Everything’s a give and take. If you’re thirsty for one thing, then it makes you vulnerable to other things, and playing professional football, offences can see that kind of stuff. When you know the eyes on you all the time, no matter what, it just gives you more incentive to play what you see.”

Rest assured, Vaughters, 32, and Jefferson, 34, are not pressing for a sack.

“We got two veteran defensive ends, and we’ve both been playing the game long enough to have that type of discretion, so you have to trust that,” Vaughters said. “You don’t get to playing as long as we’ve been playing by questioning your instincts and getting jumpy when you’re overthinking stuff. So I think it’s just a matter of just doing what we’ve been doing.”

This type of start is normal for Jefferson. It’s the fifth time in the last six seasons that he’s begun the campaign with one sack in the first four games. In the previous four instances, he’s ended the regular season with 12, seven, seven and six sacks, respectively.

“We’re playing good ball. It’s the first six games of the season,” Jefferson said. “Offences know what they want to do. They see me, they see Vaughters on the other side, they try to get to us and try to take us out of the game and things like that, but we still make our presses.

“The quarterbacks are getting the ball out of their hands quickly. If they don’t get the ball out of their hands quickly, they try to get it over us or get it around us, and it’s more than likely either gonna be a tip pass or an incomplete pass, and that’s what we play for. As long as we can get the ball out of the quarterback’s hands and then be an incomplete ball, it’s a win for us.”

While the defensive front hasn’t gotten home as much as they would like, the team’s 84.8 rush yards allowed per game ranks third in the league, and the pressure from the pass rush has helped produce five interceptions (tied for fourth-most). Those are the kinds of numbers being preached internally.

“I think you’re going to be surprised that I’ve never talked about sacks,” said head coach Mike O’Shea. “I would be more pleased if every time they got near the quarterback they took the ball away, because a sack, that’s high school. Taking the ball away is pro.”

O’Shea went on to say it’s important that the defence gets the ball back by any means necessary, whether that’s forcing a punt — Winnipeg’s defence ranks fifth in second-down conversion rate allowed at 47.1 per cent — or a turnover, which the club has done 10 times (ranks third in the league) this season.

“Those first couple of games, everybody’s fresh coming off the off-season, coming out of camp. You want to find what works for you. But then as the season goes on, guys get hurt, you start to fine-tune some of the things that you worked on in the off-season, early in the season, and then you get to try to make it better,” Jefferson said.

“Those first four or five games, you might not have got the kind of looks that you wanted, but then now you’re working, you get to watch film on the guys that you’re playing, what they’ve done against other guys — you get to try new things during practice and try to work them out during the game. Calgary has played a couple of games, we’ve seen them on film, seen their offence, so now we know what works for us, and now we know some things that work against them, and we get to put that on tape.”

Jefferson, Vaughters and the rest of the Bombers’ defensive front will try to wreak a bit more havoc when they host the Calgary Stampeders at Princess Auto Stadium on Friday (7:30 p.m.).

In the meantime, consistency is key.

“We’re getting there,” Jefferson said. “As long as we can continue to harass the quarterback in his face, make it hard for him, give our (defensive backs) the opportunity to cover and stuff like that, and we get to him, it’ll be fine.”

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca