Call rewrite — Bombers’ script stale

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/07/2015 (3196 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The usual scene: a morose Winnipeg Blue Bombers locker-room after another loss at (insert stadium name here) in (and add city here).

It’s understandably quiet and morgue-like. Those players who do speak to the media do so in hushed tones. There are, as usual, the proclamations about rolling up their sleeves to get back to work, about breaking down the film to make corrections. And it all comes with an overwhelming sense of disappointment mixed with anger.

Now rinse, and repeat. Often.

Yes, Saturday night’s 32-3 loss to the Edmonton Eskimos had a very familiar feel to it, as did the reaction from the beleaguered troops afterward. The Bombers are now 2-3 and facing the prospect of playing at least one game without their starting quarterback, Drew Willy, although his status likely won’t be updated until Monday.

What was especially disturbing for the Bombers and their faithful was the reaction, again, from the team after his exit. Winnipeg was outscored 28-zip after QB1 left Saturday’s game and the mistakes after his departure were across the board on offence, defence and special teams. And if that looks/sounds/feels/smells familiar, consider that in the two games Willy has been injured this year, the Bombers have subsequently been outscored by a combined total of 70-19.

As veteran linebacker Chris Randle said afterward:

“We need to handle adversity a little bit better. This is the second case where our leader, our quarterback, went down and we didn’t respond the way we’re supposed to.

“We are a better team than what we played out there. I know we’re better than that. Now we’ve got to go out there and prove it. It’s about understanding the situation. Our leader went down and so everyone’s level has to raise up. That just didn’t happen, on special teams, on defence, on the offensive line… but it has to.

“When our leader goes down it’s on everyone else to fill that void.”

Some ugly numbers to mull over today while the Bombers attempt to regroup for Thursday’s home date against the B.C. Lions:

• The Bombers are 4-13 since opening last season 5-1. They are 2-9 against their West Division foes and four of their last seven losses have been by 22 or more points.

•  Winnipeg hasn’t won in Edmonton, it seems, since the Diefenbaker administration (2006, actually) and is 0-2 in its back-to-back trips to Alberta over the last two weeks. Get this: the Bombers haven’t won in both Edmonton and Calgary in the same season since 2001.

• The Bombers are now 3-12 dating back to last season in games in which they trail at halftime.

So, Jamaal Westerman, what’s the first step in getting this right again, other than group therapy?

“You get back to the film,” said Westerman, the defensive lineman who led all players with nine tackles and chipped in with a sack. “You really want to see what you did well and then you want to see what you did poorly and how can you improve from that. That’s the biggest thing: there’s no magic pill out there, there’s no rah-rah speech that’s going to make you play harder or play better. It’s always about your focus and preparation and those are the things you have to fall back on because up, down, tie game your preparation, your focus and what you have to do is the same thing. It’s not ‘Oh, we’re up and I can do whatever I want’ or ‘We’re down, now I’ve got to play tight.’ ”

The Bombers defence was going toe to toe with their vaunted Eskimos rivals into the third quarter Saturday, keeping Edmonton’s attack from mounting any kind of momentum. But when Willy left — the score was 4-3 Edmonton at the time — all that began to unravel.

First, the Eskimos returned a punt to the Bomber three-yard line, giving the Winnipeg defence little room to defend. One play later it was 11-3 Eskimos. And with the Bomber attack struggling under Brian Brohm — his possession results, in order, were interception, punt, punt, interception, turnover on downs, punt, punt — the club’s defence began to soften.

Rookie Eskimos pivot James Franklin replaced Matt Nichols and provided a spark, completing five of eight passes — three of them for touchdowns — while Shakir Bell cranked out a 69-yard run.

“They’re a good team and we battled early,” said Westerman. “But no matter what happened, no matter what the circumstances are, when we’re put on the field, wherever we’re put on the field, our job is to stop them. If they’re on our one-yard line, if they’re on the 50, if they’re backed up, our job is to stop them. We were put in the position where we could have stopped them late in the game, but we just didn’t. Our job is to stop them. That’s what we get paid to do.

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“A loss like this, everybody has a hand in it. There’s no one side that can say, ‘Well, we did OK’ because we got it handed to us. We did some good things out there, but I think the D-line, as a whole, left a lot of things out there. There’s a lot of meat left on the bone. We have to get to the point where we’re chomping, where we’re taking everything off it.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait