Roster almost the same, but the attitude isn’t

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/07/2011 (5237 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you were to ask me at the start of this season what would have been the biggest risk in leaving almost completely intact a Winnipeg Blue Bombers roster that had gone 4-14 the previous year, I would not have told you that my concern was about insufficient levels of talent.

From its inception in 2010, this team has had talent in spades, just raw, young, inexperienced talent. No, I would have told you that after what transpired here last year, my only concern would be whether this team could break free from the cycle of losing and finally learn how to win.

They say there are innumerable dangers in losing too often, and if any team suffered those experiences, it was the 2010 Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

When you win only slightly more than one in every six tries, as we did last year, losing can become a habitual impediment and paralyze the confidence and psyche of a young team.

If I could write a blueprint for most of the 14 losses last season, it would look something like this: Opponent comes out and jumps on us. They empty all the bullets in their gun and then we counterpunch and mount a comeback to a degree that the game becomes interesting again and awakens the competitive spirit of our adversary. With “A” marks for effort, we never close shop until the final whistle blows, but don’t seem to have that moxie, that extra gear to overcome and win in the end.

The problem with that scenario playing out over and over again in the course of a single season is the way it can demoralize players and create a culture of underachievement. As often as you hear about teams “expecting to win,” the opposite can also prove true. When you lose in such a familiar fashion repeatedly, you almost expect things to not go your way when push comes to shove.

No one will ever admit to it, but I’m certain there were times in 2010 when we were close or tied or even winning, that I would bet a number of us players were concerned or wondering how we were going to blow it this time around. Instead of focusing on how or who would make the play that would propel us into the winners’ circle, like successful teams do, I would surmise at times we spent more effort collectively trying not to lose and hoping to be the one who didn’t make the mistake or cost us yet another game.

Of course the only way to overcome these challenges and disappointments is to start anew and become mentally stronger. As you mature and gain experience and trust in your abilities, you learn that you have a degree of control and influence over how things will turn out in a football contest, that you can impose your will on situations — individually and collectively — that will improve your chances of being successful instead of reacting and letting things happen to you.

As dangerous as it is for a team to endure failure on the grand scale of 4-14 in terms of damaging optimism and creating expectations of failure, the upside is that if that same team can mature and learn from their failures and is given an opportunity to clean the slate and start over, any small degree of success can be infectious and motivate players to no end.

If someone goes hungry for an entire year and is living a meagre existence from the scraps of others, and all of a sudden they find out how to feed and satisfy themselves independently, then that positive experience can be just as tough a habit to break as well.

So much about football is affected by your mood and the levels of optimism surrounding your team. Athletes by nature are competitive individuals and nothing is more satisfying than having an opportunity to change people’s minds about what you are capable of.

Once you have learned how to win on a small scale, however, the test that always remains is whether a limited degree of success will affect your preparation and processes that got you there in the first place.

 

Doug Brown, a hard-hitting defensive tackle with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and even harder-hitting columnist, appears in the Winnipeg Free Press on Tuesdays.