The Winnipeg Blue Bombers still have some heavy lifting to do.
And, given how their topsy-turvy 2024 season has unfolded, would anyone had expected anything different?
The Blue Bombers whiffed on their first crack at securing first place in the Canadian Football League’s West Division with a 14-11 loss to the Toronto Argonauts on Friday and with the Saskatchewan Roughriders 39-8 mauling of the B.C. Lions on Saturday, the top spot won’t be decided until the final week of the regular season.
Winnipeg is 10-7, with the Roughriders now 9-7-1 and now one point back. The Blue Bombers have won the season series meaning when the two teams to return to work after the bye week they can still lock up first with a win in Montreal over the Alouettes in a matinee on Saturday, October 26th or with a Roughrider loss or tie in their finale at home against the Calgary Stampeders later that evening.
Critical for the Blue Bombers — and first and foremost, really — is to clean up the litany of mental and physical errors from the loss to the Argos, all of which would go a long way in chasing first and finding some magic again for the playoffs.
“We do a good job in here, even when we’re winning, of being highly critical of ourselves,” said centre Chris Kolankowski. “We’re going to take that same approach now. This stings a little more but we’ll follow the same process we’ve been doing from early in the year when we weren’t doing so well to right now.
“We’ll come in tomorrow, be highly critical, be accountable for what we did and then talk about what we need to do so it doesn’t happen again.”
Predictably, the post-game media sessions featured that kind of refocus and reload thinking, but also the suggestion a hard, slap across the face — plus all the introspection that will come during the bye — might not be a bad thing.
A silver-lining take? Absolutely.
Brian Cole after his first half forced fumble and recovery
“We didn’t take anything for granted coming into this game. But we hurt ourselves. Every loss we’ve had this season we hurt ourselves,” said linebacker Brian Cole, who was sensational with five tackles, two tackles for a loss and a forced fumble/return on a Janarion Grant punt return.
“Obviously we didn’t want to lose, but maybe we needed this to get back on a streak again, right back to where want to be and where we want to go. It’s going to make us hungry again. We’re going to bounce back.
“I thank God for this opportunity, and I’m thankful we got out of this without any serious injuries,” he added. “But it’s never a good feeling when you have a good game, and you lose. It almost feels like it’s a waste.
“Still, our main goal this year wasn’t to beat Toronto. We’ve got bigger goals than that.”
ICYMI, here is our game recap from Friday night:
And what follows is the rest of this week’s UPON FURTHER REVIEW…
THE MOST-GLARING STAT FROM FRIDAY’S LOSS… and already well-documented number from Friday’s loss was the seven sacks against — the most surrendered this year and the most since giving up the same number in a 30-6 loss to the B.C. Lions on June 22nd of last year.
Worth mentioning here: in the Blue Bombers previous five games they had yielded just six sacks total.
And also worth mentioning here, again, is that in the two meetings with Toronto this year the Argos racked up 12 sacks.
“They have a tenacious front seven and we knew that coming into this,” said Kolankowski. “In the first half (with five sacks surrendered) we just weren’t physical enough and that’s the bottom line.
“That goal-line stand (where Terry Wilson was stopped twice on two cracks from two yards out) we take a lot of pride in that and (the Argos) won those snaps. That’s something we’re going to have to eat and feel over the bye week and use as motivation going forward.
“It’s like we’ve been saying when it’s going good, we can’t say we’ve arrived. We always have to be looking for improvement and there’s a lot in this game we can learn from going forward.”
FURTHER TO THE ABOVE… it’s always too easy to hang that seven QB takedowns on the offensive line when there are so many other factors impacting that. Zach Collaros took fielded some blame in that number after the game and this was a solid explanation from O’Shea:
“We go right back to 10 years ago and asking the same questions and everybody wanted to figure out who we’re going to trot out to blame which… we don’t ever talk like that.
“It’s the same answer — you can take any one of those plays and you can look at four or five things that have probably gone wrong whether it’s waggles, splits, route depth, protection, vision, timing, footwork… I mean, the list is almost endless.
“(The O-line) would have liked to play better, sure. Everybody would in the first half.”
THREE NUMBERS WHICH STOOD OUT… after a second glance at the stats package, which can be found here:
1 The late punt single by Toronto punter John Haggerty prevented the Blue Bombers from shutting out their opponents in the second halves of consecutive games after doing the same in Hamilton a week ago.
Winnipeg’s defence gave up a TD on the opening drive against the Argos and then limited them to two field goals in the final 55 minutes. In their final 10 possessions the Argos had two field goals, two turnovers on downs — including one at the Winnipeg goal-line — and seven punts.
2 Someone help with the math here… Two missed field goals by Sergio Castillo — one hitting the upright — Wilson being stuffed at the one-yard line on third-and-one in the first half, the fumble by Collaros at the Argo 20 in the third quarter… that’s at least 15 points lost by mistakes by the Blue Bombers in a game they lost by three.
3 Two Blue Bombers receivers inched closer to the 1K mark in Nic Demski and Pokey Wilson. Wilson had four catches for 33 yards and is now at a team-best 943 yards on 63 receptions while Demski has a career-high 72 receptions for 940 yards and is just shy of his posting back-to-back 1K seasons.
The Blue Bombers have had at least one 1,000-yard receiver in each of the last three years, with Kenny Lawler having led the team with 637 yards receiving in 2019.
MOP WATCH… Brady Oliveira finished the night with 105 yards from scrimmage — 64 rushing on 12 carries and 41 more in six receptions. Those numbers boosted his season totals to 1,318 yards rushing and 465 through the air on a career-best 54 receptions.
That’s 1,783 yards from scrimmage following his 2,016 total a year ago.
AND FINALLY… thanks again for reading this far and if you want to subject yourself to the video evidence of Friday’s loss, here you go: