Buck battered but unbowed

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This article was published 19/09/2011 (5452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL — So Buck Pierce is sitting on a table in the hallway of the visitors’ locker-room at Percival Molson Stadium Sunday afternoon and a reporter says to him that for all the concerns about Pierce’s health last week, he “seemed fine” during a 25-23 Winnipeg Blue Bombers victory over the Montreal Alouettes.

“I’m glad I seemed fine,” Pierce said, putting the emphasis on the word “seemed” in such a way as to make clear he’d been feeling the opposite.

“I expect to be beat up. I know my body and I know what I can do. It was another game for me that I had to suck up and go out and play. I’ve done that my whole career. A lot of people look at it as a negative. But I care so much about every opportunity I do get, I want to make sure I take advantage of it.”

Indeed, Pierce has now started every regular-season game for the Bombers this year and Sunday set a personal record for durability with his 11th straight start. He had never started more than 10 games in a row in his professional career before Sunday.

Still nursing a painful case of bruised ribs suffered in last weekend’s Banjo Bowl, Pierce was sharp on Sunday, completing 20 of 29 passes for 312 yards, 2 TDs and 1 INT in what was a monstrous win for his teammates over a Montreal juggernaut that had swept the Bombers in 2010 and who most were expecting would hand Winnipeg its third straight loss Sunday.

Instead, it was the Bombers who jumped all over an aggressive Montreal defence early and made them pay, as a 92-yard catch-and-run by Cory Watson led to the Bombers’ first TD and then a 47-yard touchdown run by running back Fred Reid extended the Bombers’ lead to 14-0 just 12 minutes into the game.

“We were licking our chops all week,” said Pierce, “because they play an aggressive style of defence…

“After we did that early in the first quarter, they didn’t do it to us again.”

The Als made no secret before the game that they would be targeting Pierce and his bruised ribs, with Als defensive end John Bowman telling the Montreal Gazette the Montreal defence had identified a “target point between the knees and shoulders” on Pierce for the game.

Pierce did take some nasty shots during the game — getting sacked three times, hit late once hard enough that it drew a flag and almost getting his head torn off by a Montreal defender on another play.

But in the end, he appeared to emerge from the game not much worse off than he went in, save for a nasty cut on his left knee.

“When you have a chance for big plays, you have to make the big plays,” he said. “And early on, we made them.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca