Stegall stymied in last kick at Cup

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/11/2008 (6393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MILT Stegall won’t make it official until he’s good and ready. But the legendary Winnipeg Blue Bombers receiver sure dropped enough hints — as did his starting quarterback — to leave the distinct impression his hall-of-fame career is done.

Stegall had five catches for 56 yards in Saturday’s 29-21 East Division Semifinal loss to the Edmonton Eskimos and was in a retrospective mood afterward.

"Football is football. I had a great time. I enjoyed it, regardless (of not winning a championship)," said Stegall. "Of course, the ultimate goal is to win the Grey Cup, that’s my only goal. But things don’t always work out the way you want them to. You gotta keep moving on, which I definitely will do."

Asked if this was the last time we would see him in Winnipeg, Stegall — as always on the subject of retirement — fired back a cryptic, wise-acre answer.

"You never know. I might be moving next door to you," he said.

If Stegall’s career is over, he’ll exit not only as the league’s all-time touchdown king with 147, but also as the all-time receiving yardage leader.

And the 38-year-old will leave minus the one football possession he craved — a Grey Cup ring.

"I feel bad for a guy like Milt," said Kevin Glenn. "He’s played his whole career and never won a championship. But that doesn’t make him less an athlete than anybody else. This guy has accomplished a lot. He knows it and everybody should know it. He didn’t win a championship? So what. He still goes down in my books as one of the greatest to ever play this game."

Stegall said throughout all of last year that he was 99.9 per cent certain 2007 would be his final hurrah. But when the Bombers came up just short in the ’07 Grey Cup game, he spoke with his wife Darlene, took a pay cut and opted to return to give it one more shot. He also moved his family to Winnipeg for the first time.

But knee surgery in early May caused him to miss the first five games of the season and he dressed for just 12 overall, pulling in 29 passes for 458 yards and three TDs — this from an icon who has posted nine consecutive 1,000-yard campaigns.

He didn’t catch more than four passes in any one regular-season game and managed to crack the century mark just once — ironically the same night he moved past Allen Pitts to become the receiving yardage leader — when he finished with 108 yards on two catches, including a 92-yarder for the record.

And so, just for posterity, if Saturday’s defeat was Stegall’s last game as a Bomber, here’s his take on what happened against the Eskimos:

"They didn’t let us get going on first down," he said. "It’s pretty difficult when you’re in second-and-long all the time to get a first down and they kept us in second and long — especially in the third quarter."

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca