Bombers believing, achieving

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This article was published 03/08/2011 (5561 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have an opportunity to do something extraordinary this week.

With a win over the Edmonton Eskimos at Canad Inns Stadium Friday evening, the Bombers would have more victories already this season than all of last season.

That’s a noteworthy achievement on its own.

But what is perhaps even more remarkable than the Bombers’ dramatic reversal in the CFL standings has been the fact they have done it in a season when an extraordinarily large number of things have gone terribly — and, in one case, tragically — wrong.

Just consider the litany of misfortune that has already befallen this 4-1 Bombers team:

— Starting quarterback Buck Pierce has already been injured twice and has finished just three of five games;

— Backup quarterback Joey Elliott — the club’s insurance policy behind Pierce and the man the Bombers brain trust hoped to groom into a homegrown starter — tore up his knee in Week 3 and is gone for the season;

— The club’s two most promising young non-imports in training camp — linebacker Henoc Muamba and receiver Kito Poblah — have both been out for over a month with serious injuries, Muamba’s suffered in training camp and Poblah’s in the first regular-season game;

— Johnny Sears, easily the Bombers’ most exciting special teams player in training camp, tore up his ankle in the final minute of the final pre-season game and won’t be seen again this season until at least September;

— Starting defensive end Jason Vega suffered a knee injury in Game 2 that’s kept him off the field;

— Starting linebackers Clint Kent and Joe Lobendahn have both missed action with injuries;

— Receiver Greg Carr, proclaimed by the Calgary Herald during the pre-season as perhaps the most likely next CFLer to make the jump to the NFL, hurt his hamstring early on and has played just one regular-season game so far;

— And finally, there was of course the sudden passing last week of beloved defensive line and assistant head coach Richard Harris, the impact of which cannot be measured because by all accounts it is incalculable.

And so put it altogether and it makes one wonder: How dominant would this Winnipeg Blue Bombers team be if some things actually started to go right this season?

“It’s been a gauntlet of a season so far and it’d be nice if some breaks would go our way, too,” defensive tackle Doug Brown reflected Tuesday. “It’s like, ‘Man, imagine if Buck hadn’t taken so many shots and he didn’t have to go through the rehabilitation process on almost a weekly basis.’ And then we have all these key people hurt and you wonder what it would be like if everything was clicking.

“But that’s the nature of the game and I don’t think any of the other seven teams in the CFL would be playing any violins for us. They’ve all had their own challenges, too.”

Indeed, for all the adversity this Bombers team has faced, they have also had two key things go their way. First, they have put together a defence that has been far and away the most dominant in the CFL this season.

Secondly, they have risen to the occasion on both sides of the ball when the game was on the line this season, outscoring opponents 81-41 in the second half thus far.

Put those two factors together and you have a Bombers team that is alone in first in the East Division this week despite what can only be described as a very trying first five weeks that hit its deepest valley last week with the sudden death of coach Harris.

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“Adversity is something you talk about in terms of losing a couple of guys for a couple weeks, never what happened to coach Harris,” head coach Paul LaPolice said Tuesday,

“That’s a real tough emotional loss. We’re still feeling that every day when we walk by his locker or walk by his office,” LaPolice continued. “It doesn’t end, it maybe just gets a little easier…”

In a remarkable season when almost nothing has come easy even as the wins continue to mount, even a little relief is welcome these days around the Bombers offices.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca