Two years of bluff and bluster

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/10/2015 (3731 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — So, after all the free-agent spending and high hopes and loud talk of celebrating Grey Cup wins on home field, the best the Winnipeg Blue Bombers can hope for is the same lousy convenience store record they posted last year.

With a 27-24 loss to the Ottawa Redblacks Friday night, the Bombers fell to 5-11 and now need to win their final two games of the regular season to finish with the same 7-11 record as last year’s team.

To do that, the Bombers are going to have to do two things they haven’t been able to do all season — beat a winning team and win two games in a row.

Winnipeg is now a perfectly awful 0-9 against teams with a record above .500. That is a damning statistic and one to keep in mind every time someone in a Bombers uniform says close losses to the likes of Calgary and Edmonton prove these Bombers can “play with anyone in the league.”

Well sure they can “play” with anyone in the CFL. So could the St. Paul’s Crusaders. And the Crusaders would lose, just like the Bombers have done. All season long.

Perhaps even more damning than Winnipeg’s inability to beat a winning team is the fact it has been 15 months since the Bombers strung together back-to-back wins. That is a sad and sorry statistic that speaks long and loud to the absence of the “character” head coach Mike O’Shea is so insistent is present in abundance in his locker-room.

Speaking of O’Shea, with Friday’s loss, his record as the Bombers head coach fell to an appalling 12-22.

That actually flatters him — subtract the 5-1 start to the 2014 season, that in retrospect was a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, and O’Shea is 7-21 since.

Let that record wash over you for a moment — 7-21.

Now, the Bombers will say you just need to be more patient. That is exactly what CEO Wade Miller asked Thursday on the occasion of announcing his team’s new season ticket sales campaign.

Citing the likes of quarterback Drew Willy, defensive end Jamaal Westerman and linebacker Ian Wild, Miller insisted “a foundation is being built and it’s coming together.”

The record, however, would seem to suggest otherwise. Indeed, without a pair of wins to close out the season, the Bombers will have actually gone backward in the wins and losses column in Year 2 of the O’Shea regime.

And they will have done so in the same season in which the Redblacks and Edmonton Eskimos have unequivocally proven you shouldn’t need any more than two years in the CFL to build a contender. Remember, the Redblacks didn’t exist two years ago when Miller and GM Kyle Walters were already in control of the Bombers. The Eskimos were a woeful 4-14 in 2013 when Chris Jones took control in Edmonton at the same time as O’Shea received the keys in Winnipeg.

Yes, the Bombers could still turn things around, win their final two games of the season and slip into the playoffs in a strange season in which a 7-11 team might actually get into the playoffs. And yes, anything could happen in the playoffs if the Bombers somehow slip in the back door and catch fire.

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But here’s another, much more likely, scenario — the Redblacks play the Eskimos for a Grey Cup at Investors Group Field on the final Sunday of November.

How come it’s only the long-suffering fans of Winnipeg — their wait for a championship now being measured in quarter centuries — who have to be patient?

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek