They ended a postseason appearance drought and a year later, hosted a playoff game for the first time in six Novembers. In some corners, that would be considered progress for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

All that said, there’s nobody at the club’s Chancellor Matheson Road offices who has spent a nanosecond celebrating two quick playoff exits over the last two years. The goal every season is the same: unless you are slurping bubbly from the Grey Cup on the last Sunday in November, what happened in the months before simply isn’t good enough.

So, what now?

What do these Bombers need to do, and what areas need to be addressed for the club to take that critical next step from contender to champion?

It’s one thing, after all, to be celebrating playoff appearances and basking in the glow of a 22-9 run dating back to late July of 2016. But that 0-2 postseason record will scar those involved. That’s what makes this winter absolutely, positively critical for the Bombers brain trust. No longer are they tasked with repairing a franchise that had become a laughing stock before they took over. Instead, they will be seeking to keep and add pieces to turn this squad into a champ, and in many ways, that’s more difficult than a rebuild.

With Grey Cup week upon us, Bluebombers.com weighs in with a look at the main questions/issues the club must address to end a 27-year drought from the winner’s circle…

WHO STAYS, WHO GOES?

First, the good news: quarterback Matt Nichols is back, as is all-star receiver Darvin Adams, all-everything running back Andrew Harris and rising stars like Jackson Jeffcoat, Jovan Santos-Knox and Brandon Alexander among others.

But the list of potential free agents is both long and substantial, a product of the CFL’s trend toward one-year contracts and the forever changing rosters in this league.

Among the big free agent names are Bombers Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman Stanley Bryant – a finalist for the league award this week – the club’s top defender in Chris Randle; two-time Bombers Most Outstanding Defensive Player Maurice Leggett, who will be rehabbing a ruptured Achilles all offseason; Jamaal Westerman, who is now tied for 10^th on the club’s all-time quarterback sacks list but is coming off surgery; West Division all-star T.J. Heath; veteran receiver and future hall of famer Weston Dressler; veteran receiver Clarence Denmark, who is now in the club’s Top 10 in receiving, and kicker Justin Medlock, who led the league in scoring.

There are 20-plus pending free agents in total with the Bombers – the entire CFL list will be made official after the Grey Cup next week – and it’s impossible for all of them to return. That will force management to prioritize according to need, production, and other variables, but it will also dramatically impact a locker room that forever spoke of their camaraderie and brotherhood.

Another factor, as always, is age: the Bombers ended this season with 13 players aged 30 or over: Bryant, Denmark, Dressler, Westerman, Leggett, Heath, Medlock, Nichols, Harris, Julian Feoli-Gudino, Dan LeFevour and Chad Rempel.

Just to put into perspective how much change is likely on the horizon: consider the change from the 46-man roster for the 2016 West Semi-final in Vancouver to this past season, where 16 players were gone by July of this year, including seven starters.

That’s the bad news. The potentially good news is all CFL teams are in this position, meaning the available talent in free agency this winter should be substantial.

WHO STAYS, WHO GOES? THE COACHES EDITION

It’s rare – outside of Calgary – for a CFL team to keep its entire coaching staff together from year to year. Coordinators get fired and hired, assistant coaches get turfed or leave for better opportunities. A year ago the Bombers saw O-line guru Bob Wylie leave for the Cleveland Browns while Avon Cobourne left the team.

Head coach Mike O’Shea addressed the rumours of offensive coordinator Paul LaPolice being linked to the vacancy with the Montreal Alouettes and the status of defensive coordinator Richie Hall last Wednesday, but again, it’s unlikely the entire staff will return in 2018, especially after hearing GM Kyle Walters speak of changes needed to the defence in his season-ending availability with the media.

THE CANADIAN CONTENT

CFL teams are built from the homegrown talent out, and the Bombers have done a masterful job of drafting in the Kyle Walters era – finding starters like Matthias Goossen, Sukh Chungh and Taylor Loffler; super-freak athletic defensive end Trent Corney and O-line prospects Michael Couture and Qadr Spooner – and augmenting the Canadian talent through free agency with the additions of Andrew Harris, Matt Coates, Jamaal Westerman, Thomas Miles and Mike Miller.

The Bombers have some offseason questions to answer as it pertains to where they start their Canadians and that will directly impact what they do in free agency and with their roster.

To that end:

• What happens to imports Stanley Bryant and Travis Bond – both free agents – and does the club want to continue starting three Americans on the O-line, knowing that Pat Neufeld, a Canadian, filled in admirably at the end of the season with Bond injured? Further to that, if the decision is to remain with three imports up front, should the club back away from spending high draft picks on Canadian O-linemen, knowing that Geoff Gray – currently on the New York Jets practice roster – could become available while Couture and Spooner are also in the picture?
• On defence, if Westerman exits, is Corney ready for more snaps? And what of the future of Andy Mulumba, the Bombers’ second overall draft pick from 2013 who has been in the NFL but is now looking at the CFL, even though negotiations with the team have stalled (an issue also touched on in the Walters address last Friday)?
• Canadian linebacker Sam Hurl, who has played the pin cushion with Bomber fans despite having the backing of his head coach, is also a free agent. How committed is the team to starting a Canadian at linebacker, knowing that Hurl’s defensive snaps dropped as the season progressed?
• After Goossen, Chungh and Neufeld (filling in for Bond) on the O-line, Harris at running back, Loffler at safety, and Jake Thomas and Trent Corney along the D-line, the Bombers are also committed to starting one Canadian at receiver. They got solid numbers from Julian Feoli-Gudino and Matt Coates, who combined for 52 catches for 585 yards and three TDs – primarily from Feoli-Gudino – while Coates pulled in eight passes for 100 yards in the West Semi-Final. Also in the mix is Drew Wolitarsky, for whom the club surrendered one of their third-round picks in the 2018 draft in this year’s supplemental draft. But is there potentially a Canadian heading to the free agent market that could boost those numbers even further and possibly give the club the option to start another homegrown in the receiving corps?

MORE WEAPONS FOR MATT?

Some numbers to consider: the Bombers’ top three receivers (not including running back Andrew Harris) were Darvin Adams, Weston Dressler and Clarence Denmark, who combined for 185 catches for 2,419 yards and 17 TDs. But while the Bombers got the occasional big game from others in their receiving corps, whether it was Canadians Julian Feoli-Gudino and Matt Coates, Chris Givens, L’Damian Washington, Ryan Lankford or T.J. Thorpe, their depth was tested with injuries to Adams and Dressler during the year.

And that depth was never more evident than in the playoffs where the Eskimos – in addition to their three top receivers statistically in Brandon Zylstra, Shaq Williams and Vidal Hazelton – also had Adarius Bowman and Derel Walker at their disposal, the former after he came off the injured list, the latter after returning from the NFL. That is a deep, deep collection of talent at a position critical in this league.

Both Denmark and Dressler are free agents and in their 30s – Dressler will be 33 next July; Denmark 33 next September – and the club either needs to dip into what could be a stacked free agent market or unearth more new talent like Louisiana Tech star Myles White, who joined the practice roster in October.

Just FYI, here’s how the Bombers Top 3 ranked against other Top 3s, based on yardage:

Ottawa REDBLACKS

Hamilton Tiger-Cats

Toronto Argonauts

Saskatchewan Roughriders

Edmonton Eskimos

BC Lions

Montreal Alouettes

Winnipeg Blue Bombers

Calgary Stampeders

A DEFENCE UNDER REVIEW

This is the area that has been under the microscope for the last two years as the club began its climb back to respectability. And rightly so. The Bombers have finished last and second last in yards allowed over the last two years – 14,487 combined or an average of 402.4 yards per game.

As O’Shea pointed out last week, there are some positive numbers the defence has produced, namely the 101 takeaways over the last two years (59 in 2016, 42 in 2017 – more than any other team), and the team led the league in points off turnovers.

But that’s the conundrum with this unit: how can a group which increased its quarterback pressures and had three players from the secondary – Heath, Loffler and Randle – named to the West Division All-Star Team also be so regularly victimized by those dreaded ‘explosion’ plays, which were part of the narrative over the last two years?

This ‘bend, but don’t break’ approach has done more breaking than bending in the last couple of years, especially when it mattered most: in the two playoff losses.

THE QB DEPTH CHART

Matt Nichols essentially ended any debate as to who is the Bombers’ QB1 when he took over from Drew Willy in late July of 2016, and promptly led the squad on a seven-game win streak that salvaged the season and re-energized the franchise.

Consider this: in the last two years, Nichols has completed 70.3 per cent of his passes for 8,138 yards and 46 touchdowns against just 17 interceptions. More importantly, the team is 21-9 when he takes the first snap from centre.

One more, while we’re tossing out Nichols’ numbers: in the last two playoff games, Nichols has hit on 69.3 per cent of his passes for 761 yards with five touchdowns and zero picks.

But it’s what is behind Nichols on the depth chart that is very much an uncertainty.

Dom Davis didn’t throw a pass in 2016, but opened this past season as No. 2 on the depth chart. He didn’t throw a TD or an interception in relief appearances, but it was his work in a late-October loss to B.C. in relief of Nichols – he was 7 of 12 for 82 yards – that left Bomber Nation wanting. The organization has invested three years in Davis, but will there be a fourth?

Veteran Dan LeFevour, a pending free agent, won an important game in Calgary at the end of the year in horrible conditions and expertly runs the offence’s short-yardage package, but could he lead this squad effectively if he had to make a handful of starts in a row?

Two QBs got looks at the end of the year with the practice roster expansion in Philip Nelson, who split his college time at Minnesota and East Carolina, and Josh Straughan, who played for Division II Stillman College before transferring to Southern Illinois. Both have earned futures contracts from the team, meaning they will be in rookie camp next year.

HOW MUCH $$ FOR MONEY MEDLOCK?

Kyle Walters has already indicated the club would like to have Medlock back, but his exit interview with the media the day after the Western Semi-Final left the possibility he may walk away from the game entirely.

The interesting debate about Medlock, a pending free agent, is how much to spend on bringing him back. He set a CFL record with 60 field goals last year en route to being named the league’s Most Outstanding Special Teams Player and led the league in scoring while hitting on ‘only’ 80 per cent of his field goals.

During his two years in Bomber colours, he has hit on 116 of 138 tries – 84.1 per cent – and was 88 for 89 on converts. More importantly, he not only became an offensive weapon for the club, but consistently kicked game winners. There are always options out there in free agency, especially if the team is willing to go the import route in finding another replacement – a move that would free up salary cap space for other spots on the roster.

But there’s risk in that, too, particularly for a club that has had a small margin of error during its win streak in a league where games are often decided inside the final three minutes. Do the Bombers want to take that risk, being this close as a franchise?

Strap in and hold on, Bomber fans, for this offseason could offer some compelling and riveting drama.