Wylie has prize hogs in pen

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This article was published 20/04/2015 (3811 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRADENTON, Fla. — Conventional wisdom in CFL circles is the Winnipeg Blue Bombers should have a much better offensive line in 2015 after the notable free-agent acquisitions of tackles Stanley Bryant and Marc Dile and centre Dominic Picard.

Funny thing, though — the grizzled, veteran football coach in charge of sculpting all those new moving parts into one seamless unit says he’s had his heart broken enough over the years to know appearances can be deceiving.

“Don’t get fooled by the pretty girls,” Bombers offensive line coach Bob Wylie laughed at IMG Academy Sunday on the first day of his club’s three-day mini-camp.

“They all look good, but they’ve still all got to go out and play. I like what I see physically, but they’ve still got to go out and block somebody. That’s the thing.”

It is a rare man who can draw a line between “pretty girls” and the 6-5, 313-pound beast that is Bryant, who was arguably the most coveted free agent this last off-season.

But if ever there was such a rare breed, it is Wylie, who is easily the most colourful member of head coach Mike O’Shea’s staff, but is little known to most Bombers fans because O’Shea forbids any of his assistants from speaking to the media — with the lone exception being this annual spring mini-camp.

It’s a terrible waste in the case of Wylie, who with 44 years of coaching experience is simultaneously brilliant and hilarious and was among the very first of O’Shea’s assistants the Winnipeg media tracked down with the assistants moratorium lifted Sunday.

Wylie didn’t disappoint. Asked whether he considered not coming back to the Bombers this season after the Herculean struggles of the team’s offensive line last year, Wylie once again found a way to draw a line between romance and a group of men so ugly they are known on every football team as the “hogs.”

“I never second guessed (coming back),” said Wylie. “I still get excited. It’s like kissing your first girlfriend. You get that little tingly sensation, goose bumps — I still get that when I step on the field for practice and games.”

Wylie is such a football legend — and his services as an offensive line coach are so coveted — the only way O’Shea could convince him to take the job last season was to allow Wylie to occasionally be absent from Winnipeg so he could attend to some other coaching commitments he had.

It was a decidedly unique arrangement and the timing was lousy, coming as it did in a season in which a porous offensive line needed all the help it could get from Wylie. The Bombers ultimately gave up the most sacks in the CFL last season and were second-last in yards rushing. Last year’s O-line was widely regarded as the club’s single biggest problem in a 7-11 season.

The consensus at season’s end was the problem came down to personnel, not Wylie’s coaching. So Bombers GM Kyle Walters went out and spent some big bucks over the winter to find the kind of linemen Wylie likes in hopes he can get them to play the way he wants them to play.

Players like Picard, who Wylie coached previously, when both men were in Winnipeg in an earlier incarnation.

Wylie says he’s looking forward to a seamless reunion with a former protege. “I kind of brought Dominic along from scratch, so he kind of plays the way I like them to play.”

“They all look good, but they’ve still all got to go out and play. I like what I see physically, but they’ve still got to go out and block somebody. That’s the thing.”

— Bombers offensive line coach Bob Wylie

And how is that exactly? “I want the edge. If we go to training camp and there’s no fighting on an inside run, there’s something wrong. If there’s no fights in one-on-one pass drills, there’s something wrong.”

With that kind of take-no-prisoners philosophy, Wylie was asked Sunday if it was difficult to watch his unit get curb-stomped week after week last season. Not surprisingly, he would prefer to forget the past.

“If you’re around this game long enough, you’re going to have good years, you’re going to have bad years, just like you’re going to have good games and bad games,” said Wylie.

“So you have a tough year? If you’ve been around long enough, you don’t let it affect you. You just move on. That’s ancient history. You have to learn to stay in the moment, and right now this is the moment.”

Bombers slotback Clarence Denmark, who popped in for a visit as a spectator Sunday, said this particular moment is very exciting to him because he thinks the new O-line is going to give starting quarterback Drew Willy more time to look downfield for targets — such as him.

“I think we addressed a lot of the issues we had problems with last year. And I’m very excited to get back in there with Drew. I know he’s going to have a ton of confidence this year,” said Denmark.

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