Building on ball-hawk defence and patient, inspired offence key to Blue striking gold

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/06/2017 (3033 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anytime you’re opening the regular season on the road against an opponent that was tied for last place in the CFL, and whose starting quarterback was your backup, the danger lies in underestimating the resolve and ability of your opponent.

With that understood, if the Winnipeg Blue Bombers display the characteristics and traits that they forged their 11-7 team identity on last year, they need not concern themselves with the overhaul and new look of their first regular-season opponent.

At the start of a new season, it’s important for any team that has significant carry-over to reflect and reinforce which of their habits were most successful the previous year. And the habit that had the most pronounced effect on their win-loss total from 2016 was winning the turnover battle. While the defence reaped most of the accolades and attention for its league-leading 30 interceptions and 59 total takeaways, the offence did a good job of hanging onto the ball, resulting in a plus-29 turnover ratio at season’s end.

So it would seem the biggest factor for this team in setting the table for success — against the Riders this weekend, or anybody else — will be to win that turnover battle. When this team forces more turnovers than they surrender, it is incredibly difficult to defeat.

Going hand-in-hand with winning that turnover battle is how the offence and defence fed off of each other in sudden-change scenarios, something we witnessed countless times in 2016. Quite simply, no matter how the offence was faring at any moment in the game, when the defence forced a turnover and swung the momentum in Winnipeg’s favour with a possession change, the offence regularly responded with a drive and points from either a field goal or major.

The offence had the ability to capture the energy of a moment and translate it into positive play. Conversely, no matter how much yardage the defence may have surrendered on a night, it always seemed capable of switching gears and rising to the occasion when the game was on the line. The more urgent the situation, the more pressure to get a stop, the more often members of the defence stepped up and met the challenge.

Though he was nicked up this week in practice, another key from 2016 that this team should strive to carry over is getting homegrown running back Andrew Harris involved early, often and in as many different, creative ways as possible. Not only do significant carries for Harris result in a balanced offensive attack and take the pressure off Nichols, but this football team seems to feed off of his effort and production.

When an offensive weapon is consistently scratching and clawing for every yard, and rewarding his O-line’s blocking with explosive runs it, in turn, leads to more inspiration and motivation. Deploying Harris as a down-the-field receiver, not just in the flat or as a check-down option, should also create additional matchup difficulties and problems for opponents this year, too.

In a quarterback-driven league, the style and habits Matt Nichols demonstrated time and again in 2016 should also serve him well if they resurface in 2017. The reason he was at the helm of an offence that turned the ball over the fewest times in Bombers history last season was not only because he had a tailback that didn’t cough up the football, and an offensive line that protected the pocket like industrial denim, but because he made great decisions downfield with the pigskin. He was extremely accurate for the majority of the year, he rarely forced the ball into the teeth of the defence, and he was always patient with the football.

When you aren’t pressing, take what the defence gives you and make few ill-advised throws, you create the identity of an offence that rarely commits unforced errors or gets in the way of its own success.

A collection of any or all of these characteristics that translated into a winning season that earned a playoff berth last year will be more important in securing a victory on Saturday than any other factor at play that we may see from an overhauled team looking for its first win in a new stadium.

 

 

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

Twitter: @DougBrown97