One step forward, two back = fast exit

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/10/2011 (5161 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Here’s the thing, the simple but inescapable thing now hovering over this 2011 Winnipeg Blue Bombers season: You cannot win the Grey Cup if you cannot win two games in a row.

 It’s just impossible. Either you can at least win a division final and the Grey Cup game in successive weeks or you cannot. Simple as that.

 And that’s a problem for a Winnipeg football team that has proven maddeningly unable, for two months and counting now, to win two games in a row or demonstrate anything even remotely resembling consistency from one week to the next.

 In seven games since the end of August, the Bombers have displayed the following disturbing pattern: lose two (to Saskatchewan), win one in Montreal, lose two (to Toronto and Montreal), win one in Hamilton, lose one in Edmonton (24-10 on Saturday night).

 A Grade 5 math student could tell you how this win-one-lose-two pattern plays out the rest of the season if the Bombers don’t do something to change the rhythm: lose a second one to Montreal this coming weekend in Winnipeg, win one over Toronto at home on Oct. 28, then lose back-to-back games in Calgary on the final day of the regular season and then in the Eastern semifinal.

 Now, you could make the case that given what this team started with when training camp opened last spring — a 4-14 record last season and a starting quarterback about whom there were many more questions than answers coming into this year — the above scenario actually wouldn’t be all that bad.

 Even with a loss in the East semifinal next month, a 10-8 regularseason record would be good enough to earn head coach Paul LaPolice serious consideration for coach-of-the-year honours, particularly as the coachof- the-year voting so often seems to come down to the simple equation of who improved most from one season to next in the win column.

 It would also be good enough — no matter what happens in the playoffs — for starting quarterback Buck Pierce to finally lay to rest the long-standing questions about his durability and for Pierce to earn a serious raise from the Bombers, who will have the unenviable task this winter of having to negotiate a new contract with their starting quarterback at exactly the time his value has never been higher.

 But it wouldn’t be good enough, of course. Not really, not after this club opened the season at 7-1, not for the fans and not for the players.

Expectations for this team were, quite understandably, raised last summer when, for a time, it looked like the Bombers were the undisputed class of the CFL and seemingly destined to finally end a 21-year championship drought for their long-suffering fans.

 Swaggerville — and all it embodied — had become a national phenomenon and Bombers management literally couldn’t build enough temporary seating at Canad Inns Stadium to accommodate all the demand.

 But then Saskatchewan happened. A loss in Regina on Labour Day followed by a loss at home the following week in the Banjo Bowl seemed to shake the Bombers. It has been a hard — and familiar — battle ever since, the victories few and far between.

 In seven games since the end of August, the Bombers have won just twice. But they have done so in a way that suggests there is still some life in them yet. Road victories over Montreal in mid-September and Hamilton earlier this month were among the most complete games and gritty victories this team has put together in years, suggesting this club is still not far from the team that went 7-1 to open the season.

 But in each instance, renewed hope was met with dashed expectations the following two weeks. After a devastating loss to the Eskimos at Commonwealth Stadium Saturday night, in which the Bombers were soundly beaten in every aspect of the game, it would appear the Bombers are once again in a funk. Only this time they are heading into the biggest game of the year — a first-place clash with the Alouettes this weekend that in all likelihood could determine who gets the bye to the East final this year. The Bombers could surprise against the Als, of course, just as they have surprised all year. But they’ll have to overcome recent past performances if it’s going to happen.

 paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca