Bomb bay doors open with Nichols
WINNIPEG ON FIRE: Blue and Gold hit the halfway mark winners of four straight games
WINNIPEG — The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have reached the season’s midway point and will enter the second half on a four-game winning streak.
The first half was quite the roller-coaster ride for the Blue and Gold, who appeared to be going nowhere at 1-4 until head coach Mike O’Shea finally made a move at quarterback.
Matt Nichols hasn’t lost since the switch, making it one of the Bombers’ top five stories of the season thus far:
1 Quarterback switch
Drew Willy was informed July 24 he would no longer be the starting quarterback.
Willy, whose contract spiked to $411,000 this season, was 1-4 as the starter and had trouble connecting on the deep ball, got sacked too often and appeared to have lost confidence. His numbers were decent, but the wins weren’t there.
Nichols grabbed the controls and hasn’t looked back, throwing the ball with confidence, getting rid of it quickly and not turning it over. Most importantly, he is 4-0 as the starter.
Nichols will receive a $63,000 bonus if he starts six games this season and could get as much as $100,000 extra based on playing time. TSN’s Farhan Lalji reported the Bombers and Willy are going to have a conversation about renegotiating his contract. Willy’s agent Brian Mackler did not confirm or deny this.
It’s unlikely to happen, but if the Bombers want to release Willy without guaranteeing his contract for the rest of the season, they have to do it before Sunday’s Labour Day Classic.
2 The coach
The big news going into the season was O’Shea entering the final year of his three-year contract.
The thinking went it was playoffs or bust for O’Shea, who currently has a 17-28 record. That’s likely still the case, although if the Bombers put up a good fight the rest of the way and still come up short, perhaps a shorter extension could be in order.
Then again, it seemed O’Shea was the last person in Winnipeg who felt Nichols should replace Willy. Did his stubbornness to stick with Willy cost the Bombers a win or a two?
3 The free agents
The Bombers for years have had trouble finding and developing enough good imports to make them competitive, so general manager Kyle Walters got the chequebook out in the off-season and spent more than $1 million on several veteran CFL free agents.
The results have been mixed, but the ones who have panned out have made the Bombers better. Running back Andrew Harris has been a workhorse out of the backfield and kicker Justin Medlock has made 20 consecutive field goals, a club record. Defensive tackles Keith Shologan and Euclid Cummings have combined for only two sacks, but they’re part of a defence that has forced a league-best 33 turnovers.
Receivers Weston Dressler and Ryan Smith have missed nine of 18 starts due to injuries, while Canadian offensive lineman Jeff Keeping hasn’t played due to a knee injury.
4 The replacements
Thanks to all the injuries the team suffered in the first half, several new players have stepped up and got the team on its winning streak.
Newcomers like defensive backs Kevin Fogg, Terrence Frederick and Taylor Loffler, offensive linemen Travis Bond and Manase Foketi and receivers Thomas Mayo and Jace Davis have all been contributors to the team’s resurgence with players like Dressler, Smith, Paddy Neufeld, Chris Randle and Johnny Adams on the injured list. And you can’t forget about slotback Clarence Denmark, who was released in the off-season. But he was brought back after the receiving corps suffered several injuries and has reverted to his 2014 form.
5 The assessment
Trying to pin down just how good the Bombers are is a game everyone played during the first half. The rough start had naysayers saying, “Here we go again,” while the recent hot streak has the believers saying they knew they were good all along. They are very likely somewhere in between. The Bombers in the first half were 2-4 against starting quarterbacks and 3-0 versus backups. They are, however, better than they were last year when they struggled to a 5-13 mark.
The second half features two games against the lowly Roughriders, one against the enigmatic Argos, another against the powerhouse Stamps, a massive clash against the Eskimos Sept. 30 at Investors Group Field that will determine the season series and then home-and-homes with the Lions and Redblacks.
We likely won’t know until the final regular season game just how good the 2016 Bombers really are.