Year In Review Series: Ed Tait takes a look at the 2017 Blue Bombers season with his Top 10 stories of the year…
#2 – A Playoff Tilt at Investors Group Field
It was a positive, happy story and a sign of real progress for a once-downtrodden franchise.
And unfortunately, it came with a crappy and abrupt ending.
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are best described these days as trending upward, morphing from a Canadian Football League laughing stock to legit contender. And nothing screams that more than a playoff appearance in 2016, ending a five-year-absence, to the home playoff game in 2017, ending a six-year drought.
But as the clock ticked to zeros in the first postseason game in the history of Investors Group Field back on November 12th, it was the Edmonton Eskimos – not the Bombers – advancing to the West Division Final after knocking off the home side 39-32.
So, for all that progress, the last image of the 2017 season was a negative one.
“It hurts,” veteran receiver Weston Dressler said after the game, while 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 secured the home playoff date with a 12-6 record – same as the Eskimos – after winning both meetings against Edmonton during the regular season. And yet while the Eskimos struggled through the first two thirds of the year with a long list of injured, they were healthy as the playoffs approached and carried a five-game win streak into mid-November.
The Bombers, on the other hand, were the opposite and entered the West Semi-Final minus leading receiver Darvin Adams, leader and quarterback sack machine Jamaal Westerman, a top defender and playmaker in Maurice Leggett, a bulldozing guard in Travis Bond and with quarterback Matt Nichols hobbling about with a bum calf and a broken finger on his throwing hand.
“I don’t know about that,” said Nichols, countering the suggestion the injuries played a factor in the loss. “We believe in all of our guys and I thought we made a lot of great plays out there tonight as well. Obviously, guys like Moe Leggett and Jamaal Westerman and Darvin Adams… those guys are all-star guys. Travis Bond we lost at the end of the year, too. Any time you have multiple guys that are recognized as the top-tier guys at their position across the league… obviously, when you lose those guys it’s going to affect you a little bit. But I wouldn’t say it’s the reason we lost.
“It came down to some things not going our way and they did a good job of not turning the ball over, which I think everything comes back to that. It’s something we preach around here. You can look at all the stats, you can look at all the passing yardage… you win games when you win the turnover battle and we didn’t do that tonight and that’s really what made the difference.”
The Bombers were a minus three in the turnover department in the playoff loss and that, coupled with defensive issues – Edmonton pivot Mike Reilly threw for three touchdowns and 334 yards as the Esks racked up 464 yards of offence – meant that the franchise championship drought dating back to 1990 was extended for another year.
“It’s just hard. You never envision it, right?” said all-star cornerback 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 gathered a day after the playoff loss to clean out their lockers and begin exit meetings with the coaching staff and management. The common theme resonating throughout the room was for the club’s brass to do everything possible to keep together a team which, at 23-13, has won the second-most games over the last two years in the Canadian Football League to the Calgary Stampeders.
That message had been heard, as seven prospective free agents – including Dressler, offensive linemen Stanley Bryant, Jermarcus Hardrick and Pat Neufeld, running back/receiver Timothy Flanders, kicker Justin Medlock and defensive back Derek Jones – have all been re-signed.
“This is the tightest group I’ve ever been with,” said Nichols at season’s end. “Everyone cares about each other, everyone hangs out with each other on and off the field… it’s a complete team that you want to be a part of. There are a lot of things I’m going to take out of this season, a lot of lifelong relationships that I’ve built throughout of the year.
“There are a lot of things to be proud of in what we’ve done. I think we took another step forward this year from last year. I look forward to getting back to work as soon as possible and getting ready to take that next step next year.”
This is the seventh in a series recapping the Top 10 Bomber stories of 2017.
Next: #1 – Harris and the Chase for 1K-1K
