Bombers equipped with all-season tires

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This article was published 25/09/2017 (2914 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s not often a lopsided victory over a team with a losing record and a third-string quarterback can be discussed as one of the most impressive victories of the season, but that’s exactly what Friday night’s win for the Blue Bombers was.

Far more important than the record of who they were playing and what number on the depth chart the visiting quarterback was, is that this was our first window into what November playoff football weather can look like and an indication of how that might affect the high-octane and high-scoring Paul LaPolice-led offence.

After 60 minutes of football in some pretty aggressive, inconsistent and sketchy weather, it may have actually made this phase of the football team look even better.

If you’ve never played football in a torrential downpour with cold, howling and swirling winds, there are challenges that need to be navigated. The speed of the game slows as everything and everyone is waterlogged and saturated. It’s near-impossible to use your hands effectively, as jerseys are wet and slick, so grabbing, clutching and pulling is more difficult.

No matter how diligently the officials try to dry and cover the footballs, they get wet and slippery, as do the gloved hands that are trying to corral and secure them.

It was raining so hard at times on Friday night, we were cringing up in the broadcast booth every time the running backs toted the rock without using both hands.

On a good day it isn’t easy to catch even a perfectly placed football with a defender disrupting the movement and concentration of the intended receiver at every turn. Add to this equation rain that is stinging your face and obscuring your vision as you try to locate and secure a wet leather football that has all the friction of a greased pig, and it makes Darvin Adams’ near two hundred yards of receiving the stuff of legends.

Inclement-weather football has its share of monumental challenges and obstacles, but this offence didn’t miss a beat, and that may be the most impressive thing we’ve seen this season, and the most promising for what is to come in playoff football.

Too often you can have a good football team that operates at high efficiency during July, August and September, but once the weather starts to turn in October and November, and the basics of execution get more difficult, those teams can fade like an exposed weathered deck. With the sneak peak of nasty weather on display Friday night, up against a defence that was playing some of their best football, this offence was undeterred, putting up 553 yards of pigskin movement. That’s the equivalent of 700 yards in pristine conditions and warm temperatures.

With 361 yards in the air, and eight yards short of two hundred yards on the ground, this offensive twelve was spectacularly balanced, and it all seems to be geared toward a style of play for successful November football. With the BC Lions free-falling and in last place in the West, all signs are pointing to both the Western semi-final and final being played outdoors, and this Bomber offence has seemingly been built with winter radials on it.

Even though it didn’t snow, the all-season tires this team has was catching footballs when Ottawa’s league-leading receivers were dropping passes all over the field. The two-headed running back tandem kept their feet under them and didn’t slip, stumble or put the ball on the deck like their counterpart did, and the offensive line, going up against a defence that had more QB pressures than any other, gave their pivot plenty of time to survey downfield. Employing two running backs that can share the ground game workload, catch out of the backfield and make people miss in small areas is proving to be a strategy that should pay big dividends when stretching the field vertically is no longer weather permitted.

Playoff football in October and November is largely about the ability to execute when the elements make everything harder and more difficult to do, and this team proved on Friday that not only were they built to operate in less than ideal weather, but that they can even excel under the worst of conditions.

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

Twitter: @DougBrown97