Play this week, sift through wreckage later

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This article was published 28/10/2014 (4053 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After the Winnipeg Blue Bombers cross this season’s finish line Saturday, there will be time for long post-mortems, for discussions of what was and what could have been.

While the final days of the regular season tick down, though, head coach Mike O’Shea is trying to keep the message the same: They’re going to march into Calgary on Saturday. They’re going to face a Stampeders team that has been the strongest in the league. And they’re going to try to come up with a win, which would be their first since Aug. 22.

In short, the coach said, the players understand they need to play at their best to have a shot at a job next year.

“Obviously (winning) is the only objective,” O’Shea said, after a day of team activities Monday. “But it’d be great for our team to salvage something out of the second half of the season and to start creating a little bit more foundation for the start of next year.”

That means quarterback Drew Willy will start, though that doesn’t mean he’ll stay: “How that plays out, I don’t have a good plan, yet,” O’Shea said. It means there may be a few roster changes, especially as defensive end Greg Peach is still hurt from last week’s loss to the B.C. Lions.

The head coach touched on what he saw on film from that tilt, which was marred by a staggering 10 sacks. Obviously, you can’t win too many football games when your quarterback is taking a hammering like that, but O’Shea was reluctant to name names.

“It’s never one group or one person that creates a sack,” he said. “It’s spread around the offence.”

He did echo what Willy said in his post-game comments, about getting rid of the football a little quicker.

“He hung onto the ball a little bit longer than he wanted to, and when we watched the film there’s certainly evidence of that,” O’Shea said. “Drew is very sharp in terms of understanding what’s going on during the game, and being able to recount pretty well everything that goes on.”

Speaking of recounting, that time will come soon for O’Shea, when media asks him to review the season that was and discuss how it came so dramatically undone. But Monday was not the time.

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“We’re in the process of trying to beat Calgary,” he said.

“It’s not fair to the guys who are going be playing. I’ve asked them to eliminate all distractions from this point forward and focus on beating Calgary. If their head coach isn’t going to do the same, we’re not going to have the direction.”

NOTE: Defensive back Demond Washington will remain out with an upper-body injury.

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.