Can’t blame Mack any longer

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/04/2015 (3817 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRADENTON, Fla. — One of the funnier Twitter memes of the last few years has been the hashtag ‘#ThanksObama.’

Used by both the American president’s detractors and supporters — the latter with tongue planted firmly in cheek — the hashtag has been used as punctuation for tweets complaining about pretty much everything, but is always funniest when used to blame Obama for the most banal vagaries of American life:

“Gas station was out of Bud. #ThanksObama”; “Couldn’t find a parking spot. #ThanksObama”; “Paid $6 for a coffee at Starbucks. #ThanksObama.”

The fact none of these things could even remotely be blamed on the U.S. president is, of course, the gag.

So what’s this got to do with a Winnipeg Blue Bombers team that will take the field at IMG Football Academy this morning for the start of the club’s annual three-day spring mini-training camp?

Well, like the Obama hashtag, frustrated Bombers fans in recent years have taken to punctuating complaints about their team on Twitter with the hashtag, ‘ThanksJoeMack.’ And like the Obama meme, Bombers fans over the years have used their hashtag to blame the former Bombers GM for just about everything wrong with a team that has missed the playoffs three years in a row and five of the last six years.

The difference, of course, is while it’s hard to seriously blame the U.S. president for a poorly stocked beer cooler, many of the things that have been wrong with the Bombers the past five years really have been, in fact, thanks to the disastrous Mack era.

Lousy Canadian talent, no quarterback, Jade Freakin’ Etienne — it all happened under the Mack watch, which began prior to the 2010 season and came to a merciful end in August, 2013 when he was finally fired.

The stench and rot left behind the Mack era was so profound, it continued to hover in the air at Investors Group Field last season, even with a new regime of CEO Wade Miller, GM Kyle Walters and head coach Mike O’Shea — all hired after Mack was fired — at the controls of the Winnipeg Football Club.

The lousy offensive line last year? Yeah, Walters could have done more to bring in help prior to the 2014 season, but you could trace that debacle all the way back to the cold winter day in February 2012 that Mack allowed the best guard in the game — Brendon LaBatte — to walk away.

The thin ranks of Canadians last year, a starting quarterback who was essentially a rookie, even the departure of stud non-import linebacker Henoc Muamba to the NFL prior to the 2014 season — all of it had deep roots in the Mack era. (Muamba? Mack had opportunities in 2012 to lock Muamba down to a contract extension and he failed to pull the trigger. By 2013, it was already too late, with Muamba’s dominating play by that point garnering all kinds of attention down south.)

So yeah, Bombers fans had every reason to still be thanking Joe Mack last season as their team missed the playoffs yet again. And so too, in a way, did Miller, Walters and O’Shea, who did nothing last season to disabuse Bombers fans of their notion that all that ailed the 2014 team — from the O-line to the long concession lines — was still Mack’s fault.

Mack provided convenient cover last season for a front office triumvirate at IGF that were all still essentially rookies in their new jobs and spent last season, for better and for worse, learning on the job.

But that free Joe Mack pass expires today — officially and finally — when the Bombers take the field this morning.

For better and worse, this is now the team Wade, Kyle and Mike built and even the most diehard Joe Mack haters are going to have a hard time blaming what goes wrong with this team in 2015 on a Bombers GM who has now been gone almost two full years.

Miller and Walters have now been at the controls of this team for over 18 months, while O’Shea now has a rookie season as a head coach behind him. They’ve all had ample time to rebuild the scouting department and rebuild the talent cupboard and next month they will collectively pull the trigger in their second CFL draft as a group.

All of which is to say that whatever happens for the Bombers in 2015, the team’s fans will have only Miller, Walters and O’Shea to thank when the final play of this season is run at Investors Group Field on the last Sunday of November.

The question now — and for which answers will begin to come today — is whether the thanks Bombers fans express to the Bombers front office at the end of this season will finally be gratefully genuine, or just another meme dripping with still more sarcasm.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek