Bombers have hope in a checkered shirt
WINNIPEG — One image from Saturday’s Banjo Bowl stuck with me through the weekend.
It actually came after the game and after Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback Matt Nichols had conducted his media Q-and-A session.
Head coach Mike O’Shea had been standing at the back of the room listening to — and learning about — his new quarterback.
When Nichols was done, O’Shea greeted him outside the door with a big smile, a handshake and a quiet, “Good job.”
Then the coach put his arm around the quarterback’s shoulders and the two disappeared into the team bunker: hope, wearing a blue and grey checked shirt, and the man who ultimately wears the wins and losses.
This is more than just another season for this football team. And I’m not just referring to the 103rd Grey Cup game.
The 2015 campaign also serves as a referendum on the latest Bomber regime: president/CEO Wade Miller, GM Kyle Walters and the feisty kid from North Bay, Ont., who was one fine CFL linebacker but who’s having trouble tackling the more nuanced job of head coach.
Well into their second year, the Big Three, a combined 11-18 at the helm, have two months left to show they’re making progress.
If the Bombers fade down the stretch and miss the playoffs yet again, the calls for change will be intense.
The sweet irony in all this: they’re pinning their hopes on a player they didn’t sign or recruit, and have coached for barely a week.
That Nichols, unseated by a rookie in Edmonton and sent packing for little more than a song, is this team’s potential messiah is both a pat on the back for the trade and a damning commentary on the GM’s and coach’s inability to effectively back up starter Drew Willy.
If Nichols can’t make chicken soup out of the feathers of the Bombers’ offensive playbook, either, then we can rest assured co-ordinator Marcel Bellefeuille, will find his neck on the chopping block.
But you can only bring the hatchet down on so many assistant coaches before everyone in the barnyard begins looking at the guy wielding the thing.
Enter Nichols, produced a win in his first game, Sunday’s hiccup-laced, 22-7 win over the headless Saskatchewan Roughriders.
But how much hope should Bomber fans hold?
Sure, Nichols looked competent in the second half. But it came against a toothless defence this season.
Everything Winnipeg did, even the impressive work of the defence, has to come with the caveat: it was only the Riders. That Nichols orchestrated 22 first downs and a respectable 367 net yards must have been sweet music to the defence.
But is the offence “finally getting their groove back,” as defensive lineman Zach Anderson suggests.
We’ll see, beginning Sunday in Montreal. If so, Bellefeuille will get a reprieve, O’Shea can put down his hatchet and the Bombers can salvage something usable from the year the Grey Cup came back to town.