Good riddance regular season, you stunk

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/11/2008 (6372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Memo to the 2008 Winnipeg Blue Bombers regular season: Good riddance.

Thanks for coming. Closing time. You can drink all night, but you can’t drink here. Don’t go away mad, just go away.

You know, that sort of sentiment.

Anybody else have fond memories? That 0-4 start; Milt Stegall never near 100 per cent; Charlie Roberts traded; Barrin Simpson lost for most of the year, followed by his replacement Joe Lobendahn; the messy, aborted trade of fan-favourite Tom Canada; the benching of Kevin Glenn.

Did we miss anything?

Oh, yeah, 8-10.

That’s the bad news, and there was no shortage of the stuff. Funny thing, though. We all know the Bombers entered the season as the darling of the East, what with all those returning players and Most Outstanding Player candidate Glenn under centre. But despite reaching such glorious levels of underachieving, look around and the Bombers’ prospects don’t seem nearly as dire as they should.

After all, how many times does 8-10 get you a home playoff date? Probably about as often as the Leafs have won the Stanley Cup lately. Heck, they could actually turn that uneven regular season into a tidy post-season profit of up to $300,000 if they sell the joint out next week.

Let that be a lesson to all you kids out there: Sometimes, losing pays.

And guess who’s 6-2 in their last eight games?

OK, we understand the final weeks of a season can be compromised once teams’ playoff fates are decided. The Montreal Alouettes lost to both the Bombers and the Edmonton Eskimos — who will be here for the East semifinal next weekend — to end their otherwise impressive season. Go figure. That’s a team on auto-pilot.

And when Some Of The Winnipeg Blue Bombers drubbed the emasculated Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Canad Inns Stadium yesterday afternoon, the contest reeked of a pickup game. But the fact is the home team won, Glenn looked extremely solid, playing pitch-and-catch with Romby Bryant, and it was all over by halftime.

These Bombers still have issues. When Alexis Serna opened the scoring with a 51-yard field goal with a stiff breeze at his back you’d think they just won the Grey Cup. Fans seemed more surprised than relieved. Then the rookie later unleashed a perfect punt to pin the Tiger-Cats deep. The kick led to a Hamilton safety.

Both promising signs. But Serna, an easy-going fellow who you’d want to root for, has been a model of inconsistency and therefore will enter his first professional post-season as a giant question mark. That’s a given.

Meanwhile, Eskimos QB Ricky Ray has this little habit of using the Bombers secondary as his own personal play toy. But outside of a couple breakdowns yesterday, the Bombers defensive backs have shown the most improvement down the stretch.

Here’s the deal: For all the positives unfolding in the dusk of a bad season, if there’s one team that can screw this up, it’s the Bombers.

Call them front-runners out of the gate and they’ll stumble. Say they’ve righted the ship and cue the iceberg. That’s just how they roll.

But that’s just another reason to kiss the 2008 season goodbye. The roller-coaster ride is over. The days of Jekyll and Hyde are nigh. At least for Hyde.

Because if the Bombers lapse back into their old inconsistent ways next week, or the week after that, their season will end. Period.

It might not be painless, but it’ll be quick. Hey, maybe that’s what these Bombers have needed all along, an environment that would elicit their undivided attention. After all, no one ever said they were lousy, even if they’ve often performed that way. Just the opposite, in fact.

That they’ve failed so often to reach their potential has been one of the more confounding questions of the entire season. It will remain so until the end, one way or the other.

All that’s left to determine is whether a team expected to rule the East — and return to the Grey Cup for the second consecutive year — can somehow climb out of the hole they spent the last five months furiously digging.

The beauty part: At least we won’t have to wait another tumultuous 18 weeks to find out.

So long 2008 regular season.

We hardly knew you.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca