‘No one thought that we would be here’ Bombers reversing their 2024 campaign owed to veteran core By: Jeff Hamilton Posted: 9:18 PM CST Friday, Nov. 15, 2024 Last Modified: 12:30 PM CST Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024 Updates

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VANCOUVER — It was the first day of training camp and Mike O’Shea’s gut had been telling him for months that things were going to be different this season.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers had enjoyed years of sustained success, including four straight trips to the Grey Cup. But while the magical run was something to be proud of, it had started to lose its shine, with the Bombers falling in the last two championship games in embarrassing fashion, giving up double-digit leads and losing on last-minute drives on both occasions.

The Blue and Gold had also emerged from an off-season that was unlike any they’d seen since snapping a three-decade championship drought in 2019. Even before playing in the Grey Cup had become routine, the Bombers, led by O’Shea, had created a culture and brotherhood that led to players returning year after year — often on team-friendly deals.

That wasn’t the case this time around.

During the off-season, key players got hefty raises, though some with other teams, while others retired or weren’t retained. That opened the door for a youth movement, creating more moving pieces on the roster. There were also notable changes on the coaching staff, including new co-ordinators on defence and special teams.

But for O’Shea, the club’s respected head coach, there was more than those obstacles to address. Although never one to publicly criticize his players, and certainly not the organization that’s made him a household name on the Prairies after a Hall of Fame playing career in Ontario, there was a sense he had something to say.

Truth was, his players were becoming too comfortable.

As the team rose in dominance so did the level of treatment provided by the club, which often extended to generous gestures for players’ families and friends. It’s the kind of stuff that shows why the Bombers have become the envy of the rest of the league.

“I told them it wasn’t going to be the same old, same old because they needed to do stuff for themselves. They needed to do more of that, especially with more young guys.”–Mike O’Shea

Knowing there would be physical changes — with fresh faces in the lineup and coaching ranks — O’Shea also wanted to ensure there would be a mental shift. So, he stood in front of the team on Day 1 of training camp with one simple message.

“I told them it wasn’t going to be the same old, same old because they needed to do stuff for themselves. They needed to do more of that, especially with more young guys,” O’Shea said.

“It had nothing to do with where we were going to end up. It had more to do with the journey that we might be on. I would have been very happy to have been wrong, but the actual journey, in the moment, most people will say that it was required. But just because it looks different and it is going to feel different, that doesn’t mean it can’t get back to that same spot you want to be in.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Despite losing their first four games, then falling to 2-6, the Bombers rallied in impressive fashion, reeling off 10 victories in their last 11 contests to seal the West Division and punch their ticket to the 111th Grey Cup in Vancouver.

It bordered on magical the way the team found its footing to give itself a chance to win a third Grey Cup in five years when they play the Toronto Argonauts at BC Place Sunday night. But what’s most remarkable is that the Bombers stepped up to do the heavy work to make it happen, rather than resting on their laurels.

“Osh (O’Shea) is going to do everything he can to put us in a position to be successful. It was now up to us to put the words and work into action and go out there and do the right thing,” veteran receiver Nic Demski said. “It’s really became, more than ever, about going 1-0 each week. When everybody kind of slowed it down and just stuck to that process of what do we got to do to win this week and we’ll worry about next week after that, that’s kind of what changed the game.

“I don’t think he envisioned it to be 2-6, but Osh is a pretty smart man,” Demski added. “In his words, he’d probably say it was perfect.”

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When you survey the locker room to find out what players are most proud of this season, the answers feel a bit contrived because they are so similar.

But it’s not a sham, far from it. When they tell you this group is the most resilient of Winnipeg’s recent championship-calibre teams, it’s not empty words. The proof is in a season that looked and felt dramatically different than the others.

That shift began over winter, with an off-season requiring more work than usual for general manager Kyle Walters.

“It was a wild off-season,” said Walters. “It was a very, very interesting February, that’s for sure, with how the roster all came together.”

Walters knew he was facing a significant transition and it wasn’t going to be easy. The club needed to get younger and he identified roster areas where he thought the club could spend less.

“And then you start talking with agents, and you start hearing numbers, and you start going, ‘Well, this is not going to work, and this is not going to work,’ and then it comes right down to the wire.”

As an experienced GM, Walters is familiar with tough negotiations. But he had his work cut out as February’s free agency neared.

The toughest talks, as often is the case, proved to be the most meaningful. Walters was able to sign star running back Brady Oliveira and receiver Dalton Schoen, both of whom received massive raises to stay in Winnipeg. Both deals came close to falling through. Losing Oliveira, a hometown star who was named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player on Thursday, would have been devastating.

“We’ve always had the mindset that we want to try and sign all our guys first,” O’Shea said. “Everybody involved is working hard to keep our guys, and they’re also working hard to figure out what’s next if somebody decides to go somewhere else. And we have no problem with that.”

The Bombers had already extended some notable names before Oliveira and Schoen, including veteran leaders in defensive end Willie Jefferson, offensive linemen Patrick Neufeld and Stanley Bryant, and were even able to attract fan-favourite quarterback Chris Streveler from the NFL to back up Zach Collaros.

With money tight, it became a numbers game.

All-star right tackle Jermarcus Hardrick chased money and signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders to become the highest paid American offensive lineman. Demerio Houston, the CFL’s interception leader in 2023, did the same in Calgary.

Also gone were receiver Rasheed Bailey and defensive end Jackson Jeffcoat, who, along with Hardrick, were three extremely well-liked players. The absence of their big personalities would not go unnoticed.

What also stood out was the coaching changes, with Jordan Younger taking over for Richie Hall as defensive co-ordinator. It seemed like an awkward situation at first, owing the fact O’Shea’s hand was ultimately forced by offensive co-ordinator Buck Pierce, who was quietly threatening to take Younger with him as he applied for the open Roughriders job that was eventually given to Corey Mace.

“Best-case scenario was we knew we’re going to go through some struggles and I don’t think we were ready for those kind of struggles.”–Bombers GM Kyle Walters

Mike Miller was handed the job of special teams co-ordinator without ever applying. Long considered to be among the best special teams players in CFL history, and arguably O’Shea’s favourite player to ever strap on a pair of pads, a neck injury in camp ahead of the 2023 season suddenly spelled the end of Miller’s playing career. O’Shea wanted to provide a soft landing spot, promising him he wouldn’t let him fail on his watch.

“Best-case scenario was we knew we’re going to go through some struggles and I don’t think we were ready for those kind of struggles,” Walters said. “But when we talked about it, we were confident this year’s team was going to be better at the end of the year compared to the beginning of the year, which we hadn’t really said in years past, based on the young guys having to contribute. And that’s exactly what happened.”

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O’Shea, sitting at a media-day table earlier this week, is chuckling about how he never predicted things would go so far south, so quickly.

“As a teenager, you don’t certainly need to make all the same mistakes that you make,” O’Shea said through a burst of laughter that seemed to be as much an emotional release as it was a joke. “You could make the same one ten times less and you’ll still end up being the same person later on.”

Even before the losses mounted, the Bombers were already licking their wounds. Injuries are simply a part of life in football, but much like O’Shea’s message at the start of the year, it was far from the status quo.

Oliveira missed a majority of camp with an injury, along with veterans Neufeld and middle linebacker Adam Bighill. Once camp opened, the number of bodies needing treatment began to grow quickly.

“Usually, it’s over the course of a season, sporadically,” Oliveira said. “This was like, bang, bang, bang, early in the season, a ton of key guys, key pieces for our team, go down.”

Kenny Lawler broke his arm in Week 1 and Schoen tore his ACL the following week, leaving the Bombers offence without their two top targets. Lawler would return after missing eight games but Schoen’s season was over before it barely got off the ground.

It wasn’t just on offence, either, with defensive linemen Miles Fox, TyJuan Garbutt and Celestin Haba joining Bighill on the six-game injured list.

The Bombers opened the season with a Grey Cup rematch at home versus the Montreal Alouettes, losing 27-12 in a game they weren’t particularly competitive in. Then came a disappointing road loss to the Ottawa Redblacks, who were led by former Bomber and Collaros’s protegé, Dru Brown, who had been traded just months before after years in Winnipeg.

But it was a 26-24 loss to the B.C. Lions where the cracks started to show. The Bombers defence was torched to the tune of 500 yards and Collaros had gone a third consecutive game without throwing for a touchdown.

In the locker room afterwards, Bryant had reached his breaking point. The CFL’s most decorated O-lineman, having won the top award for his position a league-high four times, was reduced to tears and out of answers for what was unfolding.

“All those games we lost early, I feel like we were one or two possessions away from winning those games. It was just turnovers or just stupid mistakes from everyone,” Bryant said. “When Osh said things would be different, I just felt like he meant we got new guys coming in, we got rookies coming in, that the team itself was going to be different. Not our performance on the field.”

Bryant’s emotional breakdown wouldn’t prove to be enough to get things right against the Calgary Stampeders the next week. The Stamps handed the Bombers their fourth straight defeat, winning 22-19 on a field goal in overtime. Collaros was also injured.

“I don’t think teams or defences felt like they feared us like they did in the past … When we lost Hardrick, and Geoff Gray wasn’t here throwing guys around upfield, I think a lot of people felt that we weren’t that group again.”–Stanley Bryant

O’Shea prefers the players run the room, much like when he played, but decided his club badly needed an attitude adjustment. Standing on a flimsy wooden table in the visitor’s locker room in order to look every player in the eye, he launched into an expletive-laced rant — he wanted the players to stop feeling sorry for themselves and that he didn’t want to hear anyone giving reporters cliché answers such as ‘they would stick together.’

He reminded them they were already together and that no one was going do the work for them.

The move seemed to work, with Winnipeg earning its first win against the Redblacks — Streveler leading the way in a 25-16 victory. Collaros returned the following week and led the Bombers to another win, this time beating the Stamps in a 41-37 triumph.

The Bombers were trending the right way but were still hearing outside noise. It wasn’t just in the stands, either, but on the field, too.

“I don’t think teams or defences felt like they feared us like they did in the past,” Bryant said. “When we lost Hardrick, and Geoff Gray wasn’t here throwing guys around upfield, I think a lot of people felt that we weren’t that group again. We had to get to a point where we just, not turn it on, but put it all together and get back to the physical group that we were.”

For many, the mighty Bombers were mighty no more and two wins wasn’t going to change that. The noise only got louder when they fell to their Prairie rival, the Roughriders, to drop to 2-5 and then again to Toronto.

The 2-6 Bombers were hanging by a thread.

“No one thought that we’d be here. I’m pretty visible on social media, so I was seeing all the noise. It was right in front of my face, and it was everywhere, because everyone was doubting us,” Oliveira said. “I think that was a turning point in Toronto. And after that game, that’s exactly when the season turned around.”

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The Bombers can be pretty boring at the best of times, owing to a team-first culture that stresses the importance of staying present and not looking too far ahead or dwelling too much on the past.

But make no mistake, they also love to celebrate in the locker room after wins and they’ve had plenty of excuses to let loose in recent years.

It can be difficult to manoeuvre through the room as a reporter following a win, with music blasting so loud you can barely hear your own voice, and players bouncing up and down as if the floor was covered in lava. It isn’t unusual for a player to be a couple of beers deep before you get to him for an interview.

But following the 16-14 road loss to the Argos in Week 8 that dropped Winnipeg to 2-6 and put their season on life support, you could hear a pin drop in the visitor’s room.

“I’m a very happy dude all the time. Always have a smile on my face. And that’s probably one of the first times in a long time where I wasn’t having fun playing the game,” Oliveira said. “I was pissed off with the way the season was shaping for us. I was even more pissed off because I knew the guys that we had in this locker room, and this was not us by any means, and this was not our standard. We built a high standard here for the last number of years, and no one was playing up to that standard. Being a veteran leader on this team, it really bothered me.”

Fuming from the game and fearing he might say something he’d regret, Oliveira retreated to the hallway and had a heart to heart with running backs coach and mentor Jason Hogan. Oliveira is a confident young man in his mid-20s, but sometimes his youthfulness can go against the grain of Winnipeg’s team-first mantra.

Because of that, Oliveira became hyper aware of how he acted when speaking with media, especially since signing a big contract that would have taken money from other areas of the team. But after spilling his heart out to Hogan, letting out all the emotions that were pushed deep inside, he felt much-needed relief and a renewed energy.

“I was pissed off with the way the season was shaping for us. I was even more pissed off because I knew the guys that we had in this locker room, and this was not us by any means, and this was not our standard.”–Brady Oliveira

“I’m a guy that never wants to step on anyone’s toes, but that talk allowed me to say, ‘hey, you know what, you’re allowed to talk. You’re allowed to express your feelings, not just to your teammates, but to the higher-ups,’” Oliveira said. “I’m a leader on this team, but I always felt like I couldn’t do that. Then I realized after that conversation that I’ve earned the right to have these hard conversations, if needed, with my teammates or with my coach. I’ve earned that right. So, for me, it was a big weight off my shoulders.”

The Bombers had just played their worst game of the season, notably on offence, where they committed five turnovers, an interception and four fumbles.

A team that routinely won was now trending the opposite way and fast. If there one redeeming factor to the skid, it was that four of the six losses were by a single score.

“I remember after that game … there was no more looking ahead,” Demski said. “It’s no more, like, ‘hey, if we do this, we do this now.’ Nah, screw that. All that stuff’s out the window. It was time to dial back in and get focused.”

The Bombers wouldn’t have much time to rebound, not with the 5-2 B.C. Lions coming into town off a bye week and Winnipeg playing on a short week.

No one can really pinpoint what exactly happened that led to an improbable 25-0 shutout over the Lions five days later. Or the seven subsequent victories to put Winnipeg back into the driver’s seat in the West Division.

“With the B.C. game, we just came in and dominated and put up our best performance when we needed it the most,” Bryant said. “We all knew that people weren’t happy. We weren’t happy. We just had to take accountability and look at ourselves and figure out the solution. And I think we did that.”

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It turns out, what the Bombers needed most was time.

Time for the offensive line to gel with two new starters in left guard Liam Dobson and right tackle Eric Lofton. (Lofton had been with the team a couple years back but needed to be brought up to speed again.)

“That doesn’t happen overnight,” Bombers centre Chris Kolankowksi said. “The first or five games was about getting on the same page without talking about being on the same page. It was a matter of getting that untalked-about communication, like that sixth sense we used to have between each other. We had to deal with the truth, even if it was hard to hear.”

Collaros needed time to build chemistry with his receivers after Lawler and Schoen went down.

That would take longer than expected, but improved over time, leading to Ontaria Wilson reaching the 1,000-yard mark as a rookie and Demski also registering 1,000 receiving yards for the second time in his career, and the second in as many seasons. When Lawler came back, Collaros looked more at home, finishing the year with a career-high 4,336 passing yards.

“I like looking at the young guys, and I like seeing how they’ve figured out how to fit in,” O’Shea said when asked what he’s most proud of this season. “I like looking, watching the vets around the young guys and see the amount of work they put in with them, how excited they are for them. How that’s come together over the year, I think that is something pretty cool.”

Oliveira’s early-season injury kept him out of one game and severely limited him in another, but his season took off after the Toronto loss. The league’s MOP averaged 109 yards from scrimmage in the last 10 games, including 84 rushing.

“I think to improve you need to go through failure,” Pierce said. “Sometimes those are hard lessons but you also have to have that understanding and belief in yourself that if we narrow our focus on each day, each week and just do the little things to get better, we believe we will still have an opportunity to reach our goal and that’s where we are.”

Meanwhile, the defence didn’t need much tinkering with, not with Younger now at the controls.

Younger has introduced a new system to the defence, one that prides itself on versatility and doesn’t have the same look and feel of a more traditional three-down D.

As an example, when facing second-and-long, Younger will use one less D-lineman and drop as many as nine players into coverage.

It’s an unorthodox approach and what drives that home the best is the fact that the Bombers finished last in QB sacks, with 26. Last season, they more than doubled that number.

“I’m trying to use their skillset, the things they’re good at, their gifts and trying to put them in places where they can succeed,” Younger said. “The fact that they’ve embraced that, took on roles where maybe a big guy is doing smaller-guy things or small guys are doing big-guy things. That versatility makes it more challenging for the offence. They have more trouble with identifying who’s doing what. If it’s more difficult for them, that means it’s easier for us.”

The end results exceeded all expectations, with the Bombers defence ending the regular season allowing the fewest points, touchdowns, yards, first downs and offensive plays.

But the final stretch wasn’t without its bumps.

There were close calls, like the last-second drive it took to beat the Tiger-Cats in Week 12, and while Winnipeg managed to sweep the Labour Day Classic and Banjo Bowl over their archrival Riders, it was by a combined five points.

That’s why it came as somewhat of a surprise that the Bombers made light work of the Riders, 38-22, in the Western final to punch their ticket to the Grey Cup.

But perhaps it shouldn’t be all that shocking after one final jolt from Collaros before the playoffs started.

The Bombers could have clinched the West with a win over Toronto in Week 19. But much like earlier in the season against the Argos, they were unable to generate much in a 14-11 loss at home.

Back in the locker room, about to begin a bye week, Collaros wanted to make sure he sent his teammates a clear message. Collaros isn’t one for grandiose speeches, but he saw some bad habits creeping in and wanted to make sure the players returned ready for Montreal in the final regular season game with first in the West Division on the line.

“In the role that I’m in as the quarterback, you’re looked to for leadership from time to time. And I always say, we have a lot of those guys in the room, but sometimes you just read the room, and it was disappointing,” Collaros said. “Disappointing because you could have wrapped the West up that night, disappointing because you wanted to do it at home. You don’t want to lose in front of your fans.

“I just thought it was important to be going into the bye week, like, ‘Yo, we’re OK. Let’s — let’s do what we do. Is this a bye week? Yeah, but we got to handle business, because we got three more. Next week’s a playoff game in Montreal. We owe them. Let’s get it rolling and finish the job.’”

The Bombers would do just that and are now just one win away from completing the job. Given how they started, nothing would be sweeter than cementing themselves as a dynasty with three Grey Cups in five years.

“We’re resilient. A lot of other teams and rosters could have faltered or could have crumbled when stuff didn’t go their way for so long,” Demski said. “We just stuck to our guns and stuck to our process and just made it work. There wasn’t too much change internally. Where other teams may have looked for answers outside of the building, we just made it work within our group. Brought in some pieces and, yeah, everybody just brought it together at the right time. Now it’s time to finish the job.”

Jeff.Hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

X:@jeffkhamilton