Friday’s game a make-or-break night for Bombers

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This article was published 17/09/2018 (2574 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every team has a game that defines their season — a crossroads, so to speak.

For the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, this moment will unequivocally be Friday night against the Montreal Alouettes. They will either take their first, tentative step back onto the path of winning, or they will completely eradicate any remaining confidence.

There is no sugar-coating it: this football team went into the bye week reeling. Having lost four games in a row, and back-to-back against their prairie rivals, this team has gone from a high of being ranked as the second-best team in the CFL, to a low of having their record proclaim they are last in the West and seventh-best in a league of nine teams.

When you’re not playing well, your playoff games come earlier in the year. And while you can be certain the words “must win,” will not enter the publicized vernacular of the football club, it’s hard to imagine a game of more consequence.

If this team can win, against a club they already put 56 points on earlier in the year with their number two QB, they will nudge back into fourth in the West, with five games remaining on the season, and keep the crossover berth alive. If they lose to Montreal and drop to five and eight with a fifth loss in a row — well, the collapse would be complete. No amount of rationalizing would save them. This would be the moment for most people when the 2018 season, realistically, comes to an end.

Regardless of who starts behind centre for the Bombers, the key to this game will be the play of the offensive line. While we have seen some uncharacteristic play from Matt Nichols of late, it may only seem “uncharacteristic” because we haven’t seen how he responds to this kind of consistent pressure in his face.

It is fair to say the last two seasons, Nichols has predominantly operated in a clean pocket, and had all day to make the right decisions with the football. It was only in July this season when the biggest controversy this team had was the fact that Nichols didn’t get touched, hit, or sacked, in a game where they hammered the BC Lions 41 to 19, and the Leos got bent out of shape for how that reality was shared with the masses.

Quite unlike today, when in their four-game losing streak, Nichols has been sacked 12 times, and pressured, hit and hurried countless other times. This recent inability to keep him protected, and upright, even against three-man pressures, and to consistently open up the ground game for Harris, is as much as what’s wrong with this offence as anything else.

While, statistically, a loss to the Alouettes on Friday would not eliminate the Bombers from contention, the fallout to the already-damaged psyche of this team would be irreparable. Because at some point, as a player, you come to a point of reckoning. And if you reckon you’re on a good team that just keeps faltering down the stretch, but you keep faltering against everyone, you eventually have to acknowledge the truth.

After the Banjo Bowl loss, Andrew Harris expressed his belief this team was better than its record, and latest misfortunes. He told the media, “We are good. We are a good football team. It’s frustrating because we are good and I know that. And as much as the media or the league or whoever wants to say we’re not, we are good. It’s just details we need to sharpen on and be able to finish. But talking about it and doing it are two different things.”

No matter who is starting for the visitors at quarterback, any “good” team, coming off a bye week and a chance to regroup, would beat the Montreal Alouettes — the worst team in the league — handily at home on Friday night. If they don’t, then players like Harris will have to come to terms with the harsh truth: they really don’t know who they are as a football team anymore.

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

Twitter: @DougBrown97