Blue have golden opportunity to silence critics with win in Calgary

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This article was published 19/08/2018 (2075 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the best things about professional football is a chance to prove people wrong — or right — on a weekly basis. After going off the rails against Ottawa Friday night, the opportunity to prove people wrong doesn’t get any bigger than Saturday’s match in Calgary.

After a solid performance the previous week against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats — a team thought to be better than its record and one that dismantled the Blue Bombers in Week 3 — Winnipeg pushed a lot of hot buttons and lanced multiple sore spots by following it up with a one-sided loss to the Ottawa Redblacks. It was the equivalent of laying down a welcome mat to those that haven’t bought in to the potential of this 2018 football team.

The first issue that reappeared after the Redblack beatdown was that in spite of its winning record and successes at the halfway point of the season, the team still hadn’t beaten anybody with a winning record. When 5-3 met 5-3 at Investors Group Field Friday, and the home team got bullied and run roughshod over in its own building, this assertion only rang truer.

In addition, the suggestion that as much as things have changed defensively, “nothing has changed defensively” also picked up some steam after the worst defensive performance of the season against Ottawa. When you surrender 500 yards of total offence — and more than 100 of that is on the ground — it’s hard to continue to sing the praises of a group that had looked like it was turning over a new leaf.

Lastly, there were grumblings about the stats line of starting quarterback Matt Nichols — even after the Hamilton win and his 25-10 record — and that was before he got smacked around by a lunchpail crew of Redblack defenders and followed that up by taking offence when a vocal minority jeered his return to the field when the game was all but over.

The culmination of these three criticisms all rearing their heads after one game leads to the perfect storm of doubt that this year’s football team currently finds itself mucking around in.

With the 7-1 Stampeders on deck, this may seem like a stretch of unfortunate events and calamities that are befalling the team right now, but if frame the right way, it’s actually the biggest opportunity of the season.

For, if the Bombers and their coaches are tired of what they feel are inaccurate, misinformed or knee-jerk reactions to small samples of their play, then they have the ultimate redemption opportunity in front of them.

And the stakes and rewards are higher than ever.

Over the course of an 18-game season, rarely will a single win change anyone’s opinion about your football team. This is almost always true, unless, of course, that win comes against Calgary in its own barn.

If the critiques and condemnations of Winnipeg have been shortsighted and prisoner-of-the-moment-type reflections, then a sensational bounce-back game against an opponent of this calibre can, literally, fix it all.

If this team, supposedly, can’t beat anyone with a winning record and then they beat the team with “the” winning record, then the doubt is laid to rest, no matter what happens against Saskatchewan in the coming weeks. If the defence can hold Stamps QB Bo Levi-Mitchell in check and keep his prolific offence under wraps, then the Blue and Gold stomp out any notion that they can’t stop an offence that actually knows what it’s doing.

And lastly, if Nichols can put up points against a defence that is smothering everything in its path and play like we’ve seen him in several critical games, then the boos and jeers — and argument over who and what was being booed — goes away, too.

High-level athletes run on fuel, and the fuel for this game doesn’t fit into any of the four good groups. It’s the fuel of anger and an ‘us against the world’ mentality that can sometimes propel teams to new heights. If a team is collectively sick of being needled and judged after every loss — and some wins, too — then this is the opportunity to silence the critics. Heck, even a down-to-the-wire effort and loss against a powerhouse like Calgary will go a long way in revealing what this team is all about, and who was right about what.

And if they get blown out again, well the well-worn phrase “I told you so” will probably rule the day for a much longer spell.

 

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97