Weston Dressler spoke in hushed tones, his voice barely a whisper in a silent Winnipeg Blue Bombers locker room that had a funereal feel after Sunday’s playoff loss.
“It hurts,” began the veteran receiver, struggling to fight back tears. “It’s just you go through so much together and you come up short. You feel like you let your teammates down and there’s nothing you can do.
“Part of it is you’re not ready to be done. We’re not ready to come in tomorrow and have a meeting not talking about the next game. It just… hurts. That’s all I can say.”
The Bombers finished 2017 with a 12-6 record, tied with the Edmonton Eskimos as the second-best record in the CFL to Calgary’s 13-4-1 mark. But for the second straight November, they also had their season end with a loss in the West Semi-Final.
“It’s just hard. You never envision it, right?” said Chris Randle “I didn’t anticipate this happening. I didn’t anticipate us packing up or our team not being the same. You know how rare it is to keep a team together and we’re more than a team, we’re family, we bonded. Our team deserves better and it’s just unfortunate that we came out with an ‘L’ tonight.
“You don’t accept that it’s going to be over. You refuse to. You plan for it, you speak as if you’re going to the Grey Cup. You never once anticipate this conversation. It’s just hard.”
The Bombers will meet the media on Monday and have exit meetings with the club’s coaching staff and brass before heading home. Head coach Mike O’Shea will speak to the media on Wednesday.
But the emotions in the immediate aftermath were in the moment and they were very raw.
“It sucks,” said running back Andrew Harris. “But we came together this year and this is the most fun playing football I’ve had in a long time. The brotherhood that we’ve started here… after a game like this you see your brothers and you feel the love and compassion.”
“I mean, everyone feels let down right now and it’s horrible. But at the same time we came together and I really feel that I have brothers in that locker room. There’s definitely positives to take out of this season. Ultimately you want to win a championship, but… it sucks. That’s the only way to describe it.”
Both Harris and left tackle Stanley Bryant will be in Ottawa for the Grey Cup, as the West Division representatives for top Canadian and offensive lineman at the Most Outstanding Player Awards.
Of course, the plan was to have the entire team there along with them.
“It’s a tough, tough loss,” said Bryant. “It was just one of those games where they had a lot of big plays, where we had some offensive opportunities and we just didn’t capitalize.
“Right now, it doesn’t seem real that we don’t have another game. In the end, I know that’s not true… it’s just so tough because Matt (Nichols) fought all week to get back and he played well. Andrew (Harris) played well, but we just didn’t have enough.”
