Willy ready to lead Blue into battle

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This article was published 22/10/2014 (4059 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Even better than how Drew Willy looked in practice, head coach Mike O’Shea thought, is what the Bombers pivot said to him after throwing a few bombs.

“He said he’d be fine,” O’Shea said, after running his team through their paces Tuesday.

It was a short ‘n’ sweet chat for the coach, not much to say, not with the tiny handful of media that turned out to Investors Group Field Tuesday. Must be a Jets game that night, he mused, and of course he was right. Or maybe the dwindling media also speaks to the way the spotlight moves on, now that the Bombers are almost — but not quite — formally out of the 2014 playoff fight.

There’s still a way for them to get in, though the chances are slim. If the Bombers win their final two games, if the B.C. Lions lose out (starting when they come to Winnipeg Saturday), if at least one of the top three teams in the East can’t find an eighth win. The simulation engine on the CFL website runs the Bombers at a 0.04 per cent chance of winning this year’s Grey Cup.

(Cue the Jim Carrey quote, from Dumb and Dumber: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”)

Okay, it’s not much. Which is why former Bomber and current Free Press columnist Doug Brown floated this idea in Tuesday’s paper: maybe it would be best for the team to sit Willy for the rest of the season, and showcase back-up pivot Robert Marve a little more. (Brian Brohm, of course, is out for the season with a broken thumb.) Maybe there’s something there, that other teams would pay a healthy price for.

As far as Willy goes, the young quarterback made it plenty clear after Tuesday’s practice he just wants to play.

“I think you can answer the question yourself,” Willy said, when TSN 1290 reporter Darrin Bauming asked him whether it might be better for the team to showcase backups through these final two games. “Yep. It’s that simple.”

Also pretty simple is that his hand feels good enough, now, after he sat out Saturday’s battle against the Calgary Stampeders.

“Feeling definitely better,” he said. “I was able to come out here and practise pretty well. I missed a couple of throws that I should make, but it was pretty solid.”

It was just one of those funky injuries that took him out of the Oct. 13 game against the Eskimos. He played most of the first half in that grim 41-9 loss, before swiping an Edmonton player a little too hard.

‘I was able to come out here and practise pretty well. I missed a couple of throws that I should make, but it was pretty solid’

— Drew Willy

“I tried to play through it, and the next couple of passes, I didn’t feel like I could control them that well,” Willy said. “Instead of trying to keep playing through it, when I can’t make a good, simple dig-route throw I’ve been making all year, it’s tough to stay in there and do it to your team. I just wanted to make sure and put the team in the best possible position.”

Willy is back and set to lead the Bombers into battle against the Lions in a do-or-die game to keep even that thin thread of a playoff chance alive.

“Their defence has played really well lately, they’re not giving up touchdowns,” said Willy. “They give up some yardage, but they’re very solid at the back end and they don’t let you really get into the end zone.

“So we have to work extremely hard this week in the red zone to be efficient, because we’ve been struggling in the red zone for sure this part of the season. So we need to make sure we’re executing at all phases.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.