Bombers leave us truly blue

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/11/2009 (5798 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So, is everybody blue enough now?

Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. But, hey, at least the most faithful of Blue Bombers loyalists didn’t throw in their free blue towels until the bitter end, managing to kindle enough interest to almost fill the stadium again.

But the Bombers, unfortunately, emptied the thing by the final whistle.

So it was that the 2009 season ended as it began; with a tragically inept offence, back-breaking interceptions and a team that couldn’t overcome its deficiencies at the most important position on the field.

Look, it wasn’t all on Michael Bishop, whose numbers were awful — 8-of-26 for 122 yards, with one TD for the good and another two ran back for majors by Hamilton Tiger-Cats defenders. For every Bishop mistake, there was a dropped ball here and a bad route there.

We often talk about Good Michael, Bad Michael. Well, there’s Good Bombers and Bad Bombers, too. Like the defence that on Sunday surrendered a healthy 396 yards.

That would bring us to Kevin Glenn, of course, who clearly was looking for some payback against the team that unceremoniously dumped him last year. The former Bomber pivot came in protesting about how he wasn’t interested in revenge or looking to prove himself against the team that jilted him.

What a load of crap. Glenn came into the game shrugging off his reputation in the Bombers locker-room as being a little fragile. Bombers all-star defensive lineman Doug Brown playfully (but not unintentionally) suggested that Glenn was adverse to taking hits. Who isn’t, right?

But in professional football slang, this is intimating that Glenn is soft and wilts under physical pressure. This may explain why Glenn bounced up thumping his chest after taking a late hit on the first play of the game — all the while staring and screaming at the Bombers bench. It might explain why Glenn did the chest-thumping act again after diving into the Winnipeg end zone to cap the first Tiger-Cats drive.

Yeah, Glenn wasn’t interested in revenge (eye roll).

But good on him, though. If Glenn had showed half of that passion in recent years maybe he’d still be in Winnipeg.

Regardless, the Bombers never really got to see if Glenn does, indeed, start hearing footsteps because he spent the entire afternoon virtually untouched — throwing for 316 yards in the process.

Yes, the Bombers got exactly as far as they deserved. This was a club that only had a chance in some delusional world where “anything can happen.” Instead, it was a team that — in the most crucial moment of their season — converted exactly ONE first down in the second half. Oh, and 10 yards passing. In two quarters.

No doubt, there will be a whole off-season to assign blame. Criticize Bishop at your own peril, however, because the Michael Bishop that spent the last three months in Winnipeg was the exact same Bishop during his CFL tenure in Saskatchewan and Toronto.

You could argue that the Bombers season was lost long before Bishop arrived in mid-season.

If head coach Mike Kelly manages to survive what has to be described as a turbulent, troubled and ultimately unsuccessful rookie season, it’s going to cost him every ounce of “benefit of the doubt” left in his goodwill tank.

After all, when Kelly began this season with three unproven quarterbacks, it was not without widespread objection. Kelly replied, “We’ll be OK.”

When the Bombers rescued Bishop — or did Bishop rescue them? — he was described in this space and others as a Band-Aid. Kelly disagreed and said, “We’ll be OK.”

Ask yourself: If the Winnipeg Blue Bombers start the 2010 season with Bishop as starting quarterback and Mike Kelly as head coach, do you think they’ll be OK?

After an entire season, all that bombast, all those raging controversies, all those empty promises, the Bombers — who spouted all year that cliché, “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish” — finished with one first down in what can only be considered a merciful end in their lost season.

And 10 yards passing.

It’s not a matter of whose job is safe anymore.

It’s a matter of whose job deserves to be safe at all.

Understandably, those in the Bombers front office with their fingerprints all over this crash-and-burn, including president and CEO Lyle Bauer, will be spinning this as a rebuild with a first-year head coach that almost ended up with them hosting a playoff game.

But then, this has been a season littered with ‘ifs’ and ‘almosts’ that never materialized.

Good luck selling that in 2010.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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