This is no time for coach O’Shea to spare the lash

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/08/2016 (3359 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Here’s hoping Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea showed appreciation for his team’s efforts Thursday by tearing a strip off them, and running them into the ground every chance he got this week. For if there is one consistency this football team has shown us over the last couple of years, it’s they don’t handle success on the field the right way, and if this is going to change, it needs to start now.

You can rationalize and make every excuse in the book for a team’s inability to win two straight games over multiple years, but when it’s gone on this long, the only legitimate conclusion is they take their foot off the gas at the first sign of reprieve. That isn’t necessarily the reason why they’ve lost every game after a win, but when it’s gone on this long, you can’t seriously attribute it to anything else.

The challenge that faces them at home Wednesday — other than simply playing at home — is there won’t be near the same amount of dramatic subplots to energize and engage them, and this is not the time to exhale. Last week the team put on a show the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 2015 season opener in Regina, but their world was also burning all around them.

Nothing stokes the fire of a player’s engine like a quarterback controversy unfolding, and in Edmonton the team handed the reigns to Matt Nichols for the first time without Drew Willy first being airlifted to a trauma ward. Shakeups like that get the attention of the roster because of the realization other changes aren’t far behind.

The team also had a number of pundits calling for the bonnet of their head coach, and that is yet another emotional charge for a team. When you are shaken out of denial and realize your performance on the field is about to cost your boss his livelihood, the ears tend to perk up around the water cooler.

Add to these events all the injuries the team had to cover on the offensive line and in the secondary, and how everybody wrote this team off, and you have a perfect storm of dissent and an “us against the world mentality,” to spark the best game this roster has put together in more than a year.

But what happens when all of these stimuli are suspended for a week by a win, and the urgency of imminent catastrophe is put on hold? What happens to the player mentality when people sing their praises for a stanza and get all gushy about the potential and possibility of their performance?

Because if last week was an uphill climb because of the record, and the pressure, and the changes, and what was at stake, then they need to prepare for traversing a glacier Wednesday, if they wish to snap out of this funk. For no longer will they have the benefit of zero film of Nichols in Paul LaPolice’s offence. No longer will opposing receivers have no clue of the tendencies of the newby defensive backs that will be covering them, and no longer will a defence be surprised by a game plan determined to run the ball down their throat, like what we saw in Edmonton.

As hard as this team had to have dialled in last week, and as big a chip they must have had on their collective shoulders, they need to resurrect that same emotion and energy, without all of the outside stimulus. It’s commonly said the CFL season is a marathon, and if that’s the case this team has walked the first third of it, and then decided to sprint the next 100 metres. If this season is going to turn around, it will need to find a pace it can sustain week in and week out, and locate motivations that aren’t fuelled by the drama of the moment, and controversy surrounding the organization.

We won’t have to wait long to see if it can, and has.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97