Leading his Big Blue horses to water

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This article was published 09/08/2017 (2976 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Richie Hall isn’t coaching an elite defensive unit. But he’s pushing them to get there.

“It’s not that they’re not pushing themselves, but we want to be greedy, we want to be the best that we can be,” the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive co-ordinator said following practice at Investors Group Field Wednesday afternoon. “We’re not going to be perfect but we strive for excellence on every play and every day.”

The Blue Bombers, fresh off a 33-30 comeback win in Ottawa on Friday night, have been far less than perfect for much of 2017. However, Winnipeg does have a 4-2 record and sole possession of fourth place in the CFL’s West Division.

The West is exceedingly tough this season and the Bombers, who have collected three of their wins against East Division foes, will need to continue to suck up victories, taking advantage of the league’s power vacuum when they face the winless Tiger-Cats in Hamilton Saturday night.

Winnipeg’s defence is seventh in pass yards allowed per game (342.3), fifth in 30-plus-yard pass plays allowed (11), fifth in rushing yards allowed per game (85.7) and, most importantly, eighth in offensive points allowed per game (32.8).

Hall was unhappy with his players’ attention to detail last week in practice and he saw a similar trend earlier this week.

“Last week I let them know how I felt and today I didn’t say very much. You just go about doing it,” Hall said. “You just hope they look at it and they’re not satisfied with how we practised. Was it a dismal practice? No. But you’ve got to challenge yourself to how can we get better individually and as a group.

“You push them but they also need to push themselves. It’s one of those things where as coaches, no different from you guys as parents, you can only do so much. They have to do it for themselves. We’re only going to improve when they decide that they want to improve. I can only push them so much but I can’t force them to do anything.”

After a poor start in the first quarter in Ottawa, the Blue Bombers rallied in the final 45 minutes and held the Redblacks to 263 total passing yards. The effort coincided with the return of linebacker/defensive back Mo Leggett, who had missed two games with a lower-body injury.

“I’m just out there doing my job, communicating and just leading with a veteran presence,” said Leggett, who recorded five tackles on Ottawa’s first drive of the game that resulted in a Redblacks major and two-point convert. “I felt like they were just trying to test if my lower-body injury was, you know, healthy. It was kinda fun. It tested my conditioning. I just tried to respond.”

Leggett was recognized Wednesday as one of the CFL’s top performers in Week 7 — he finished the game with seven defensive tackles, two quarterback sacks and a forced fumble.

“We started to settle down and we just made our adjustments,” Leggett said. “If they’re going to speed up the pace, this is what we’re going to do and don’t scramble. And that’s what we did…

“Me being out, that’s a big gap as far as veteran presence goes especially. We have a bunch of new guys coming in and you have two rookies in the field (defensive backs Roc Carmichael and Brian Walker), you have to have someone to actually help them out. It’s not that they’re not capable of it, it’s just the experience that goes along with it.”

Winnipeg’s D showed a statistical improvement against the Redblacks, cutting total yards allowed down to 393 from the 531 surrendered to the Montreal Alouettes on July 27. But the improved pass defence came at a cost.

“Yeah, I thought (we were better), but we also gave up 130 yards rushing,” said Hall. “You fix one thing and it’s the other thing. When you look at it, they had two plays for 20 yards on passes, so we’re minimizing that but the 62- or 52-yard run at the start of the second half was pretty frustrating. The third quarter has been our best quarter and all of a sudden, second play, boom. It was just a fundamental thing of not being where you are supposed to be.

“That was frustrating but the explosion plays are coming down. When they come down consistently, the other things will take care of themselves.”

Hall admitted playing the cellar-dwelling Ticats could be a trap game.

“They’re playing at home,” he said. “They’re better than their 0-6 record. They had an opportunity to beat (undefeated) Edmonton both times.

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“I think we have a good football team but we’re not good enough to just show up. We’re a good football team when we go out there and we play. We can’t look at their record — 0-6 doesn’t mean anything. It just means they came up on the short end of the stick.”

Hall hopes all the weeks of work during and since training camp will come to fruition.

“To be successful, you’ve got to do be able to do it consistently,” he said. “We’re still teetering at that point where, do you always know what you’re going to get. I don’t (know).

“Because we’ve looked pretty good at times and we’ve looked like we couldn’t beat a high-school football team at times.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @sawa14