One play changed Bomber history

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/09/2010 (5538 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Late in the third quarter of the East Division final at Rogers Centre on Nov. 18, 2007, Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback Kevin Glenn attempted to hand the ball off to running back Charles Roberts. The handoff was botched and the ball hit the turf.

Glenn dove for the loose ball and was hammered into the ground by Toronto Argonauts linebacker Kevin Eiben. The impact broke Glenn’s arm. The Bombers managed to hang onto a 19-9 victory to advance to the 95th Grey Cup against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, but to no avail. With backup Ryan Dinwiddie making his first CFL start, the Bombers lost 23-19. It was a game in which Dinwiddie threw three interceptions, the last as the Bombers were driving for a potential game-winning TD, giving the Riders the franchise’s first Grey Cup victory in 18 years.

You’ve heard of the Butterfly Effect, right? Where a moment in time is altered, forever changing the future. It’s the basis for the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life and countless other movies and works of science fiction. It’s the premise for theses hypothesizing: What if JFK had lived?

There’s a famous short story about someone traveling back in time to the prehistoric era, accidentally stepping on a butterfly, only to return to the present to discover that the language had changed due to the ripple effect of the butterfly’s demise millions of years before.

Why bring up the poor butterfly? Because a few days ago Kevin Glenn was named the CFL’s offensive player of the week. For the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. The Bombers, meanwhile, lost 27-23 in Regina, a game where starting quarterback Buck Pierce suffered a dislocated elbow, an injury almost certain to end his season.

Doug Berry, who was head coach of the Bombers for that fateful East final in 2007, is now offensive co-ordinator for the Riders. Former Bombers GM Brendan Taman now holds a similar post in Regina.

Since that East final, the Bombers are 17-30, including losses in the 2007 Grey Cup and 2008 East semifinal. They have fired two head coaches, and currently sit 2-7, dead last in the East.

But what if that fumbled hand off — such a harmless looking play with disastrous results — never happened? What if the Bombers had a healthy Glenn in the 2007 Grey Cup? How would the team, even the entire CFL, look different today?

Here’s one theory: The Bombers would have won the Grey Cup, ending a drought that dates back to 1990. Berry never would have been fired after a regressive 8-10 season in 2008, meaning that the brief, turbulent Mike Kelly era never would have existed at all.

The two decades of suffering in Bomberville would have mercifully ended. Taman wouldn’t have resigned in the wake of Kelly’s hiring.

Former Bombers president and CEO Lyle Bauer, now in the Calgary Stampeders front office after resigning last year, couldn’t have either fired Berry or hired Kelly — and therefore might not have resigned after the 2009 train wreck.

“Do we win the Grey Cup? I don’t know,” Taman said earlier this week. “But you take that (Glenn’s broken arm) away and we still might be there. All of us. We would have bought ourselves two more years, I think, had we won. Ever since that happened it’s been a disintegrating piece of dust.”

Damn butterflies. Today, Glenn, who was literally jettisoned by Kelly for nothing in favour of long-gone Stefan LeFors, is now an MVP candidate for the Ticats. The Bombers roster and front office from 2007 has almost completely been purged.

Bauer isn’t the only former Bomber in Calgary. Last year, Kelly — who was hired because Berry was fired because the Bombers never won the 2007 Grey Cup because Glenn was injured — traded receivers Romby Bryant and Canadian Arjei Franklin to the Stamps, where both are now key members of a high-octane offence.

Coincidentally, what are the two of the Bombers pressing needs? A go-to receiver (Bryant) and an impact non-import (Franklin).

In fact, let’s take our Butterfly Effect even further. What you don’t know about 2007 is that following the Riders Grey Cup victory, the Bombers were on the verge of signing a promising young free agent Canadian receiver named Chris Getzlaf, who had spent the season on Saskatchewan’s practice roster.

“True story,” said Taman. “In December of that off-season I met with Getzlaf in my office in Winnipeg. We were going to sign him. We had a deal, but you know why it didn’t get done? Because they (Saskatchewan) won the Grey Cup, and if he signed with Winnipeg he wasn’t going to get a ring. So I couldn’t go through with it.”

Today, Getzlaf is a full-fledged member of the Riders Canadian Air Force, along with fellow Canucks Rob Bagg and Andy Fantuz.

But if Glenn hadn’t broken his arm, and the Riders hadn’t won the Grey Cup, Getzlaf would never have been waiting for a ring in the first place. Right? “Maybe there’s Winnipeg’s Canadian receiver for the next few years,” Taman noted.

Meanwhile, it would be the Riders still pining to end the longest current championship drought, not the Bombers.

That’s the thing about moments in time forever altering the future, not unlike the everyday occurrences in life. Sometimes, those moments can lead to greatness. Others can be rued for years and years. And the subsequent ramifications never end.

“The whole thing is bizarre, really, the way it works,” Taman concluded. “Everything has changed in that organization since the wheels got put in motion. It was a pretty big defining moment, I think.”

And if you could go back in time again to the moment in 2007 after Glenn hit the turf in Toronto, what might you find?

A squashed butterfly, probably.

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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