BOMBERS LIFT WEIGHT OFF WINNIPEG
First it was the Boston Red Sox, then the Chicago Cubs and now the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have finally broken free from a franchise-defining championship drought.
While the Red Sox famously went 86 years between World Series titles and the Cubs oneupped them with a 108-year gap, the Bombers’ 29 years between victories is comparable because they play in a nine-team league.
That’s why you saw such unbridled joy, so many tears, so much pure, raw emotion in the players on Sunday after the Bombers beat the Hamilton Tiger-cats 33-12 to win the Grey Cup for the first time since 1990.
They carried the weight of a city’s hopes and dreams and they delivered, spectacularly, with a championship for the ages.
They finally got the world’s biggest silverback gorilla off their backs and they did it by winning two playoff games on the road and beating the league’s top regular-season team in the championship game.
What made this team so special?
Perhaps receiver Drew Wolitarsky said it best.
“We have some of the best energy I’ve ever felt in my life,” the 24-year-old said. “We have something greater than football on this team.
“I have a quote, and excuse my French, but it’s f--- logic. Out here, logic doesn’t matter. It’s about who you’ve got, what kind of mentality you’ve got, what kind of family you build. That’s what we’ve done here. F--- logic.”
How wonderfully fitting it was that Andrew Harris and Nic Demski — two kids from Winnipeg’s Oak Park High School — were stars of the game.
They combined to put up 236 yards and two touchdowns, willed their way to first downs, executed exceptionally in the biggest moment, on the biggest stage.
Harris, Demski, fellow Winnipeggers Thomas Miles, Brady Oliveira and Geoff Gray, and the rest of the Bombers will get that chance Tuesday afternoon when a championship parade is held in downtown Winnipeg.
A whole generation of fans have never seen such a spectacle. Among the Winnipeggers on the team, only Harris was even born when the Bombers last won the title.
At the beginning of the season, the Bombers were considered Grey Cup favourites.
They’d been on the rise for four years and came close to making it to the big game last year before losing in the West final to Calgary.
They started out 5-0 and were 8-2 before Labour Day, but there were cracks in the armour.
No. 1 quarterback Matt Nichols suffered a season-ending injury, Harris was suspended after a positive test for a performance-enhancing drug and receiver Chris Matthews was released.
A 3-5 record in September and October, and a fall to third place in the West division, didn’t exactly inspire many followers to believe a Grey Cup run was possible.
But this wasn’t your average team.
“It’s not the adversity, it’s what you do with it, how you learn from it,” Bombers coach Mike O’shea said.
“These guys are great learners and they used every bit of it to get better. Sometimes not as quickly as I would have liked, but where we ended up, where we slotted in, and what we’ve done has been perfect.”
The turning point for this team came on Oct. 9, when general manager Kyle Walters made a deadline-beating trade to acquire quarterback Zach Collaros from the Toronto Argonauts.
A savvy veteran with a strong arm, Collaros turned out to be exactly what the Bombers needed, winning all four games he started and walking off with a Grey Cup.
The numbers for Collaros in his four starts: 66 of 98 pass attempts completed for 851 yards with four touchdowns and one interception. He completed eight passes of 30 yards or more, giving the Bombers offence a whole new dimension.
It’s entirely possible Collaros will play just the four games with the Bombers. He’s a free agent in February and the Argos have expressed interest in bringing him back. His family lives in the Toronto area.
But he will be remembered by
Blue Bombers fans forever.
So will Nov. 24, 2019.
“You could tell it was gonna be something amazing right from the start of the season,”
CFL most outstanding defensive player Willie Jefferson said. “It was something we fought all year — the ups and downs, the adversity — fighting against all that, beating the odds. That’s what we do man, we fight and we keep fighting.”
All of this reflects back on O’shea, who won his first Grey Cup as a head coach, in his sixth year at the helm of the Bombers.
“I think the city of Winnipeg, the diehard fans around the province, our Bombers fans that travel and are scattered around the country, they should feel a tremendous amount of pride for their team, and they do. I’m very happy for them. This is awesome.”