Year In Review Series: Ed Tait takes a look at the 2017 Blue Bombers season with his Top 10 stories of the year…

#4 – Critical Injuries at Critical Times

There they were – Jamaal Westerman and Maurice Leggett, alongside Darvin Adams and Travis Bond – all gathered together and bundled up on the sidelines during the West Division Semi-Final.

And as the foundation for a potential all-star squad watched helplessly, their Winnipeg Blue Bomber teammates would fall to the Edmonton Eskimos in the first home playoff game in these parts in six years.

The bunch that was healthy enough to take the field, by the way, was led by a quarterback in Matt Nichols who had a broken ring finger on his throwing hand and a left calf strain that severely hampered his mobility.

It left everyone to wonder what might have been, and how this untimely rash of injuries undercut what was such a promising season.

Before we go any further, let’s get this out of the way right here and right now…

Yes, football is a violent sport and injuries are a part of the game for any team in any league. This isn’t about making excuses or attempting to gloss over the Bombers not getting it done against the Eskimos, and in the process, extending a Grey Cup championship drought which dates back to 1990.

And yet, take a 1,000-yard receiver, a top defensive player, leading quarterback sack man, and emotional kingpin, and an all-star guard out of any team’s lineup – and when it mattered most, no less – and how would that not impact any football team anywhere on the planet?

The double-whammy for the Bombers was this: unlike the Eskimos, who suffered a good chunk of their injuries earlier in the season and were healthier when the playoffs arrived, Winnipeg lost two of their stars – Leggett and Adams – after the Canadian Football League’s trade deadline.

The Eskimos, for example, added running back C.J. Gable and John Chick, both CFL vets, to offset some of their injuries, but the Bombers were limited to finding their help in house. That’s not to denigrate the work of someone like Patrick Neufeld, who filled in admirably for Bond when he was dinged, or for Dan LeFevour, who stepped in and led the Bombers to a win in Calgary in the regular season finale that clinched the home playoff date, but experience matters – especially in November and especially at some key positions.

“Those are two very big playmakers on each side of the ball,” said Weston Dressler of Adams and Leggett. “Those are ‘X Factor’-type players that you never know when they’re going to step up and make that big play that can change momentum in a game. Those are two guys that can single-handedly win a game for you.

“There aren’t a lot of players like that that can take over at times. It’s tough to overcome that. We feel as a team we’ve got all the pieces to fill in. It’s not about replacing each guy individually, it’s keep playing as a team and doing everything we can.”

The Bombers did soldier on, as they say, but there’s no minimizing the significance of all those injuries down the stretch. While the Bombers were 10-3 after a win in Edmonton in late September, they struggled to a 2-3 finish to the regular season before the playoff loss.

“The reality of all sports is teams are going to take their hits injury-wise,” said Bombers GM Kyle Walters in his season-ending session with the media. “When a team like Edmonton takes its hits at the beginning of the year or in the second third of the year, they can take their lumps with that losing streak that they had and they’re forced to acquire some assets and fill some holes out of necessity.

“And then when they get their group healthy at the end of the year, you see the result. That’s a good football team that rolled in here that was healthy. Conversely, a team that gets hit in the back end of the year, there’s just not as much time to make any sort of moves and the guys that get thrown in the fire haven’t had a chance to develop.

“Unfortunately, for our season, when you get dinged with injuries at the end you’re dealt with the cards you’re dealt with and you have to roll with it.”

What’s freaky about what unfolded for the Bombers is how innocent the injuries looked in the moment. Westerman, for example, couldn’t remember how he suffered the arm injury in the Banjo Bowl; Adams sustained his shoulder injury on a hit he’s taken over the middle many times before; Leggett ruptured his Achilles fielding an on-side kick attempt in a win over B.C. in mid-October, and Bond suffered an upper-body injury on a routine play in a loss to Toronto later that same month.

Nichols, meanwhile, broke his finger in a loss to Hamilton and then tweaked his calf while leading the team on the final drive in that one-point setback against the Argos. The following week, he felt his calf pop on a non-contact play against the Lions and his status for the playoff game was very much in doubt up until kickoff.

Even then, while he completed 35 of 48 passes for 371 yards and three TDs in the 39-32 loss to the Esks, his mobility was very limited.

All of this is to say that, in the end, the injuries to key personnel at the worst-possible time meant the Bombers would skid to the finish line rather than sprint across it.

“I tried my hardest not to shed a tear,” said Leggett as he watched his teammates take the field against Edmonton with his foot in a walking boot. “I was going around the locker room saying, ‘Just put some cleats on the bottom of my boot. Just keep going.

“I wanted to play that badly. I would have given everything just to play one more play.”

This is the fifth in a series recapping the Top 10 Bomber stories of 2017.

Next: #3 Nichols Cements Spot As QB-1