Turkey to triumph 'Miracle on Maroons Road' brightened up woeful 2010 season for Bombers By: Declan Schroeder Posted: 7:00 AM CDT Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/10/2021 (1802 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was Thanksgiving and, fittingly, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were serving fans a big helping of turkey.

The date was Oct. 11, 2010 — almost exactly 11 years ago to the day — and the place was a warm and sunny Canad Inns Stadium, where the Bombers were getting lit up by the B.C. Lions.

Indeed, the Blue and Gold were getting the stuffing beaten out of them by Travis Lulay and company. The game wasn’t exactly a classic between two juggernauts: the Lions came into Winnipeg sporting a 5-8 record, while the Bombers were a dismal 3-10 under the head coaching of then-rookie Paul LaPolice and general management (if you could even call it that) of Joe Mack.

The Lions had built up a 32-11 lead by the end of the third quarter; the quarter culminated with Lulay hitting Emmanuel Arceneaux with a seven-yard touchdown pass. The Lions put up 24 points against a hapless-looking Bomber defence in that quarter alone.

Alex Brink — one of many forgettable Bombers’ quarterbacks of an era where the pivot carousel spun at a nauseating speed — had made his first-ever start, and it was an unmitigated disaster.

The unproven Brink had completed just four of 18 passes for a paltry 61 yards, and chants of “We want Jyles” started coming from the stands by the mid-third quarter.

“Jyles” referred to quarterback Steven Jyles, who had signed as a free agent in the off-season. The Louisiana native had started a handful of games already that season due to three separate injuries to the battered and bruised Buck Pierce, but was on the sidelines to watch Brink bomb in his debut.

We all know the old saying that the most popular man on any football team is the backup QB, but Jyles’ first possession — just before the Arceneaux touchdown — had led to a punt.

Only the most bright-eyed optimist could have stomached the first 45 minutes of the game and possibly thought Jyles could lead the Bombers out of a 21-point hole with just a quarter remaining. Many fans had already hit the exits for either their first Thanksgiving dinner or to gorge on leftovers.

(As an aside, this reporter, 15 years old at the time, remembers the television in his household going off after the third quarter as well.)

“The obituary had gone to press. The last shovel of dirt was being dumped on the casket that represented the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ 2010 season and the angry mob was heading home… perhaps for good,” then-Free Press sportswriter and current senior Blue Bombers writer Ed Tait wrote in the next day’s edition.

Spoiler alert: those who left early would regret it. Under centre, Jyles orchestrated what would become known as the “Thanksgiving Day Miracle,” a double-overtime thriller that’s one of the Bombers’ most memorable comebacks.

“Half the hometown fans had left griping about a turkey,” late Free Press journalist Randy Turner wrote in an article headlined “Miracle on Maroons Road.”

“The die-hards who stayed behind found their Thanksgiving.”

First, Jyles moved the Bomber into field-goal range and kicker Justin Palardy hit a 45-yarder to get the Bombers within 18. After the Lions went two-and-out, Jyles hit Corey Watson with a 46-yard deep ball before completing a 15-yard pass to Terrence Edwards, who made a highlight-worthy catch, leaping over defensive back Anthony Reddick to secure the ball.

Big brouhahas that took place after the touchdown and extra point led to three Lions penalties and Palardy oddly kicking off from the Lion’s 35. He booted it through the end zone for a rouge. All of a sudden, the Lions’ lead was just 10.

But Jyles and company were running out of time; with the score still 32-22 and 2:13 left, Jyles began a drive at the Winnipeg 11-yard-line but marched them to the B.C. 39. From there, he completed a touchdown pass to Greg Carr in double coverage with 57 seconds remaining.

The convert was good which brought the Bombers to within three, but they still needed the ball back.

And get the ball back they did. All B.C. needed to do to escape with a victory was gain one first down, but the Bombers defence cut down a Jamal Robertson run on second-and-four at the line of scrimmage, forcing a punt.

Returner Jovon Johnson fielded the bouncing punt at his own 11-yard-line near the sidelines, but cut back toward the middle of the field and found an opening. He rumbled 59 yards to the Lions’ 40.

After a five-yard run by Fred Reid, Palardy pounded a 42-yard field goal through the uprights to tie the game, sending the crowd that had stuck around into a frenzy.

“Holy smoke!” TSN announcer Rod Black exclaimed. “And we’re going to overtime!”

B.C. started the overtime shootout with the ball and Sean Whyte kicked a 30-yard field goal to regain the lead, 35-32. The Bombers answered with a field goal of their own to tie things yet again.

CFL overtime rules dictate that whichever team has second possession in the first shootout round gets first possession in the second round. The Bombers quickly drove to within the 10 yard line thanks to another good run by Reid, who came up limping.

On the one yard line, Jyles handed it off to backup running back Yvenson Bernard. He made no mistake, plunging into the end zone.

That meant Casey Printers — who had replaced Lulay at quarterback — needed to orchestrate a touchdown drive. But on first down, after an illegal procedure penalty made it first-and-15, he was sacked by Dorian Smith.

On second-and-19, Printers tossed up a prayer to O’Neil Wilson that was easy pickings for ball-hawk Deon Beasley. He intercepted the pass and even though he didn’t have to, he took it all the way to the house, executing an emphatic front flip as he arrived.

“Deon Beasley takes it to the end zone and flips out, and so does this stadium!” Black exclaimed.

The final score: 47-35.

“What a wild, wild game,” Black continued. “And there is life in Winnipeg. Could they have had a better Thanksgiving? Just like when it looked like the game was lost, the season was lost, somehow, someway, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers found a way to win this ball game.”

Former Bomber centre Obby Khan — now a restaurateur and businessman — told the Free Press’s Tait he kept saying the game wasn’t over and the team could come back.

“We can do it,” he said. “And we did it. I was standing beside Brendon LaBatte, we looked up at the crowd and we saw this mass exodus of people. And I said, ‘You know what? This is the CFL and anything can happen.’ Me and LaBatte just looked at each other and said, ‘We can do it.’ Everyone stepped up.”

A number of fans on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Facebook fan group still have vivid memories of the game.

Blake Hamm and a bunch of his buddies were sitting in Section S, known as the most raucous and rowdy at the old stadium. They didn’t leave because people would shake their keys at you if you did, and as good frugal Manitobans, they “wanted to get their money’s worth.”

“Who else goes on Thanksgiving to watch a dismal team but the diehards?” he asked. “So we stayed to the end. It makes it that much sweeter when tasting victory when you endure the ugly — and trust me, the first part of the game was ugly.”

“Just an unbelievable finish,” said Bomber fan Neal Einarson, who was also in attendance “We were dead in the water until Jyles came in and lit the spark that we needed… I just remember the frustration from the first half and the elation in that final minute, especially with that insane and unexpected punt return by Jovon Johnson.”

Andria Klapprat went to the game with her Dad and she said she warned people heading to the exits early not to go because the Bombers were going to come back and win the game.

“It was a great finish and the fans still in the stand were so loud,” she said. “At the next game, some of the ‘beat the traffic’ crowd were telling us how they never even left the parking lot. They heard the cannon go off and ended up sitting in their cars listening to the rest of the game. They definitely regretted leaving early.”

Stephen Wiebe was one of many fans in their cars. “I was there, and left early,” he admitted. “I heard the cheering from the parking lot and was able to catch the end of the game on the radio.”

Larry Spence was living in Vancouver at the time and said “this game in some aspects I think cost me a relationship.” The lady he was courting at the time invited him to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner, but he knew they wouldn’t be watching the game, so he told her he’d come after.

He never made it. After Beasley’s interception, he got so excited jumping up that he hit his hand and cracked a bone in his wrist.

“I ended up going to the ER and eating a turkey sandwich along the way,” he said. “I now have a small scar that I call my ‘football injury’ to remind me of that.”

In the Oct. 13, 2010 edition of the Free Press, humour columnist Doug Speirs — a dyed-in-the-wool Lions fan — wrote he was “mocked, taunted, subjected to gleeful, gloating phone calls and emails” about the comeback.

“I was still drying my eyes when my cellphone started chirping with calls from ‘friends’ who wanted to make the following football-related points. 1) ‘NEENER! NEENER! NEENER!’ 2) ‘B.C. SUCKS!’ 3) ‘AGAIN: NEENER! NEENER! NEENER!’

“Apparently, this is just the way the cookie crumbles when you are famous for openly and obnoxiously rooting for a football team that ends up on the wrong side of one of the most bizarre, most unexpected comebacks in the long and winding history of the CFL,” he acknowledged.

This reporter chatted with Speirs via email last Friday and sent him the old column. Coincidentally, the Bombers were set to face the Lions that night (and won in dominating fashion, 30-9.)

Bomber fans didn’t have any reason to gloat to Speirs or anyone else for the rest of that season; they didn’t win another game and finished an abysmal 4-14. Feelings of anguish were a lot more familiar than ones of elation in that era, unlike in recent times, where the Bombers have become the class of the CFL.

But as Turner wrote after the Thanksgiving Day miracle: “for the briefest of moments, the seemingly endless string of costly injuries, bad ideas, fatal meltdowns — only to be interrupted, almost cruelly, by brief glimpses of promise — seemed to vanish. Just as it was hard to remember that the same team that left the field to the deafening roar of the fans who remained was the exact same team getting unmercifully booed just an hour before. At home.”