A lousy Manziel helps out O’Shea

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This article was published 21/09/2018 (2621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One guy was trying to relaunch his football career. The other guy was — maybe just maybe — trying to save his coaching career.

We will never know for sure what would have happened to Mike O’Shea Friday night if the Winnipeg Blue Bombers had done the unthinkable and lost to Johnny Manziel and the Montreal Alouettes because the Bombers won, 31-14.

Would Bombers head coach O’Shea have been fired if this deep and talented Bombers squad had lost their fifth in a row to the worst team in the league and fallen to 5-8?

Probably not. O’Shea’s still got two years after this one left on an ill-advised contract and Bombers CEO Wade Miller isn’t the kind of guy who likes to admit mistakes, especially a costly one like this one would be.

But make no mistake, a loss Friday night would have set in motion a chain of events that in all likelihood would have ended in early November with the Bombers making CFL history as what I’d argue would be the most talented team ever to not make the playoffs.

Not even Miller could deny the harsh reality of that — nor, in all probability, could O’Shea survive it.

Miller only had to look out at the smallest crowd of the season that turned up at Investors Group Field Friday night — announced at 24,349, maybe two-thirds of that actually showed up — to realize that we may be very quickly reaching a point where the only thing more expensive than firing O’Shea would be to continue to keep him around.

But as it is, a very frustrated fan base is placated — at least temporarily — and O’Shea and the Bombers live to fight another week, having posted a desperately needed win and keeping themselves within striking distance of a playoff spot that should have been a given for a Winnipeg team many thought barely a month ago was a legitimate Grey Cup contender.

It’s not a script anyone would have imagined for a team that on paper — and even on the field, at least for the first half of the season — was deeper and more talented than any team in the league, with the exception of the juggernaut Calgary Stampeders.

But where there’s life, there’s hope and the win over the Alouettes gives the Bombers a bit of both heading into a brutal final stretch of games that will include two games in Edmonton, one in Ottawa and home dates against Calgary and the Saskatchewan Roughriders that will determine, once and for all, who these 2018 Bombers really are.

All Friday night’s win proved is that the Bombers can defeat the worst team in the CFL, which the Alouettes undeniably are at 3-10.

While this was a must-win for Winnipeg, you don’t plan a parade to Portage and Main when the best thing you’ve done in the last six weeks is defeat a team led by a QB who was making just his third pro start since December 2015 and who is better known for his ridiculous antics off the field than he is for the flashes of brilliance he showed on it a long, long, long time ago.

Manziel’s previous two CFL outings were an unmitigated debacle. In Week 8, he posted a 0.0 quarterback rating and threw four interceptions in his CFL debut, a loss against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. A so-so outing the following week that came in another loss to the Ottawa Redblacks.

Concussion symptoms and superior play (the bar is low in Montreal) by the Als’ other QB, Antonio Pipkin, had kept Manziel out of the lineup ever since, leading him to whine publicly about it last week.

Now, most teams would outfit a guy who complained publicly like Manziel did with a clipboard permanently, but Montreal is nothing if not the most dysfunctional franchise in the CFL and so they instead rewarded Manziel for his outburst and handed him the start Friday night at Investors Group Field.

What did Manziel do with his big chance to get his football career back off life support? He was better than he has been, but still not nearly good enough.

There were flashes of the trademark improvisation that earned Manziel the nickname ‘Johnny Football’ — and a Heisman Trophy — while he was playing college ball in Texas, but mostly that was a function of the horrendous protection afforded him by a terrible Als offensive line than any ingenuity or ability on his part.

Aside from that, Manziel looked like exactly what he is: a man who hasn’t played pro football in the better part of three years. He hung on to the ball way too long, way too often, taking four sacks in the first half alone. When he did throw, it was mostly ducks of the kind that get shot out of the sky in these parts at this time of year.

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He got better as the game wore on but by night’s end, Manziel had thrown for a pedestrian 212 yards (and a backbreaking interception late in the fourth quarter) and the whole idea the player formerly known as Johnny Football is going to be the salvation of the Als, much less the CFL, looked as laughable as ever.

And O’Shea? He needed a win, maybe even more than his desperate football team. They both got one on a night failure wasn’t an option.

Now comes the heavy lifting.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @PaulWiecek