Time for change, all right

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/11/2008 (6393 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You know that Winnipeg Blue Bombers 2008 media guide — the one with Charles Roberts on the cover?

Rip it up. Put it on eBay. Give it to that cousin you can’t stand for Christmas.

Because — and we’re just spitballin’ here — it’ll be about as useful as Terry Bradshaw’s comb. Don’t be fooling yourself.

Doug Brown isn’t. The human torque machine sat staring around a dispirited Bombers locker-room late Saturday afternoon and didn’t blink at the suggestion that — not unlike an election you may have heard about south of here — that change was in the air.

Defeat was in the air, too, but we’ll get to that later.

“What are we, 8-11 now?” said a resigned Brown. “That’s more bad than good. That’s what the record says to me.”

Sure, it’s not like the Bombers rolled over against the visiting Edmonton Eskimos at Canad Inns Stadium. They were just good enough to lose.

Sound familiar? “For the better half of the season, that’s who we were,” Brown said, “Coming up short.”

Hey, it’s not like these guys didn’t get second chances. Maybe they got too many. But other than trading Roberts and benching starting quarterback Kevin Glenn midway through the season, Bombers management stuck with their core group of players. And what did that loyalty get head coach Doug Berry and GM Brendan Taman — other than some rather awkward exit meetings?

Answer: Squat.

True, the Bombers did rally after a dreadful 1-6 start to finish 6-3. Yesterday, it was a loss by a major and a two-point convert.

Close, but as Brown concluded: “Only God likes a trier.”

Naturally, there were sentiments that favoured holding pat.

“It depends on management,” linebacker Ike Charlton noted. “I would like to come back, but it’s out of my hands. We’re not old. We’ve got a lot of guys with talent. Hopefully, we can build around the core.”

Our guess, however, is that it just might be the core that needs the most work. You see, the Bombers have talented players. They’ve got six all-stars. They’ve got a pretty solid offensive line and a superb defensive front.

You know what the Bombers need? They don’t need bricks, they need mortar. They need glue. They need some sort of cohesive leadership force that makes them a collective, not just a collection of proven athletes.

The Bombers were favoured to win a playoff game yesterday. They didn’t. At home.

If there is a more indictable offence in professional football, let me know.

And if you read between the lines, the onus was clearly on Glenn, who finished the contest 15-of-34 for 233 yards — one-third of that production on a 78 yard bomb to rookie receiver Romby Bryant. Glenn also was picked off by Edmonton defensive end Fred Perry, who rumbled 31 yards into the Winnipeg end zone.

It was one of two critical turnovers — the other being a fumble by running back Joe Smith in the third quarter — that betrayed the Bombers’ chances. Let’s be fair: Perry made a spectacular play on a ball he had no business intercepting.

But at the same time, Glenn’s counterpart, Ricky Ray, was 27-of-37 for a tidy 303 yards. And no interceptions.

Berry was generous enough in his post-game press conference to note that Ray had an “outstanding day.” On the other hand, “It was a little bit disappointing that we weren’t able to match that.”

Or did Berry really mean, without saying the words, that he was disappointed that Glenn wasn’t able to match that?

Our guess is the latter, although Berry was assertively ambiguous about Glenn’s long-term future. “Right now he’s our starting quarterback,” Berry said.

Glenn, meanwhile, wasn’t interested in talking about the prospect of personnel changes. “You have to go ask management that,” he deferred.

Sure, if they’re still around to make the changes. Which is exactly why we believe Berry and Taman, after remaining faithful to their own players this season while under tremendous pressure to make fundamental moves, instead chose to trade away one superstar to wake up the remaining troops.

It worked, but only to a point.

And neither is there the lingering spectre of last off-season, when Berry and Taman were reluctant — with good reason — to tinker with a team that lost the 2007 Grey Cup, coming up one late interception short. (Again.)

“We don’t have the same motivation (to keep the team intact),” Brown reasoned. “Last year we were on the cusp of being champions.”

Today, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are on the cusp of something else entirely. Something more ominous.

Alert the printers. That 2008 media guide is not just going to have a new cover.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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