Bombers must get out of the gate quickly, for a lot of reasons

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This article was published 13/06/2015 (4003 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mike O’Shea is not the panicky type.

So when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach said this week he wasn’t particularly alarmed about all the projected starters who were missing practice with injuries — 10 of 24 were hurt at one point this week — there was no reason not to believe him.

But Mike O’Shea is also not a dummy.

He is grimly aware the Bombers have arguably the toughest schedule in the CFL to start the 2015 regular season, and all these injuries are making it tough to prepare a team that is going to need to come together quickly if it is going to put some early wins on the board.

Consider what the Bombers are up against during the first five weeks of the regular season:

Week 1 — They travel to Regina, where they haven’t won since 2004, to play a Riders team that is 12-2 against Winnipeg in the last 14 games.

Week 2 — The Bombers host the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, a little outfit that would be Grey Cup champions today if only an illegal block late in last year’s Grey Cup game hadn’t nullified what would have been a game-winning 90-yard punt return TD.

Week 3 — The Blue host the Montreal Alouettes, who won nine of their final 12 games last season and made it to the East Division final.

Week 4 — The Bombers travel to Calgary, where they will play the defending Grey Cup champion Stampeders in a city where Winnipeg has only won once since 2002.

Week 5 — The Bombers travel to Edmonton — where they haven’t won since 2006 — to play an Eskimos team that lost last year’s West Division final to Calgary and who many are favouring to win this year’s Grey Cup.

Put it together and that schedule would be an extraordinary early season test in any season, much less one in which Winnipeg has gone through extraordinary change in the off-season and could have as many as 10 new starters when the regular season opens.

It stands in stark contrast to a 2014 season in which the Bombers had a remarkably easy early season schedule, front-loaded as it was with soft East Division opponents.

The Bombers rode last year’s early season schedule to a shiny 5-1 start that had fans proclaiming the town “Willy-peg,” only to see it come apart in a 2-11 finish that exposed the club as no match for the league’s big boys in the West Division.

So what’s the difference if you have to play them all eventually? Well, history has proven it’s never a great idea to open a season in which you intend to play in the Grey Cup on a losing note.

Consider: the Bombers have played in six Grey Cups since 1990 — and they had a winning record after their first five regular-season games in each one of those seasons.

And this: with the Bombers hosting this year’s Grey Cup game, a strong start by the home team will be essential to selling tickets to the big event. Those Grey Cup tickets aren’t cheap this year and it will be a lot easier to convince Winnipeggers to pony up big bucks to sit outside in late November if they believe it will be to see the Bombers end a 25-year Grey Cup drought.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek