Upon Further Review | WPG 30 EDM 3

It was a 60-minute sample of what could be for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers – the equivalent of a tasty and thoroughly satisfying meal at a five-star restaurant.

And now, following Saturday night’s 30-3 evisceration of the Edmonton Eskimos, the question for the Bombers and their faithful becomes this:

Will they be able to serve up another scrumptious performance this coming week in Ottawa against the REDBLACKS and beyond?

“It just shows us when we do what we’re coached to do we’re a very good football team and we can beat very good football teams,” said quarterback Matt Nichols outside a euphoric Bombers dressing room late Saturday night. “That’s two weeks in a row and now it comes down to can you sustain it and keep doing what we’re doing and not look too far ahead and just look towards this next game. We’ve got another tough one this week. Really, I talked about it during the week: we’ve got tough ones from here on out and they’re all playoff games to us.”

Interestingly, the events Saturday – with the Bombers winning and the B.C. Lions getting torn apart in Hamilton by the Tiger-Cats – means the playoff percentages spiked upward considerably for the Blue and Gold.

According to sportsclubstats.com, the Bombers playoff chances increased a whopping 26.6 percent to 88.2 percent, while Edmonton dropped 10.9 percent to 73.1 and B.C. fell 15.6 percent to 41.5.

All of those numbers are a fancy-schmancy mathematical way of just confirming what everyone else already understood: Saturday night’s ‘W’ was massive.

The Bombers pulled into a tie with the Eskimos at 7-7, are now four points back of the Saskatchewan Roughriders (9-5 after their win in Montreal on Sunday) and are two up on the Lions (6-7). The Bombers have lost their season series with the Riders, tied the series with the Lions and are even with Edmonton, with a regular season finale scheduled back at Commonwealth Stadium on November 3^rd.

The remaining schedules for each of the teams in this West Division race:

• Saskatchewan (9-5):  vs. Edmonton, @ Winnipeg, @ Calgary, vs. B.C.
• Winnipeg (7-7): @ Ottawa, vs. Saskatchewan, vs. Calgary, @ Edmonton
• Edmonton (7-7): @ Saskatchewan, vs. Ottawa, @ B.C., vs. Winnipeg
• B.C. (6-7): vs. Toronto, @ Calgary, vs. Edmonton, @ Saskatchewan, vs. Calgary.

“We have to get on this roll now,” said Bombers defensive back Brandon Alexander. “We have four games left and we understand that we control our own destiny. We’ll let this one simmer for a day and then it’s on to Ottawa.”

More on the Bombers victory in Edmonton in our weekly post-game collection of notes and quotes we call UPON FURTHER REVIEW…

SOME NUMBERS FROM SATURDAY NIGHT… that reinforce the defensive dominance of the Bombers:

• The three points allowed by Winnipeg was the lowest total since a 31-2 win over Saskatchewan in the 2010 Banjo Bowl, and just the seventh time in the last 10 years they’ve kept an opponent to a single-digit point total.
• The defence limited Eskimos quarterback Mike Reilly to 17 of 31 passing for just 164 with zero touchdowns and two interceptions, including a Pick-6 by Kevin Fogg. The 164 yards passing was his lowest of the season – a guy who had seven 300-yard games coming in – and his lowest since throwing for 160 in a game against Saskatchewan in August last year.
• Reilly also had a streak of 42 consecutive starts where he threw or rushed for one touchdown snapped Saturday night.
• Edmonton’s longest play from scrimmage was a 26-yard pass to Duke Williams with seven minutes left in the game and with the Bombers leading 27-3.
• The Eskimos managed just 2.7 yards on second downs and were just 1-of-11 on second-down conversions of seven yards or more.
• Edmonton had 15 offensive possessions that included three interceptions, a turnover on downs, three fumbles and seven punts – plus the one field goal. Their average start in field position was their own 25-yard line. Just by comparison, with the work of the Bombers defence and special teams – and the offence in pushing the team out of bad field position on a couple of occasions – Winnipeg’s average start was its own 53.

“Offensively… every game’s a bit different,” said Nichols. “We were given a lot of short fields, so the yardage numbers aren’t there from a normal game. That’s not the type of game it was. When it was a tight game in the first half we had a lot of short fields and capitalized with a couple touchdowns and a few field goals. A lot of the second half was just pounding away at the clock. It was a great team effort, a great win against a good football team in a tough place.”

THE CFL DOESN’T TRACK PRESSURES ANYMORE… the league’s coaches and general managers thought the tracking of the stat was too inconsistent and subjective a year ago, and so those numbers weren’t available after Saturday’s performance.

The Bombers did get to Reilly four times, and successfully made him uncomfortable in the pocket with a variety of blitzes from different angles. That also meant the damage done by Williams – who left the game in the fourth after injuring his shoulder following a hit from Marcus Sayles – was limited, as he had just two catches for 37 yards.

“We understood coming into the game that Mike Reilly is a great quarterback, knowing that Duke Williams a great receiver, knowing that they have a powerhouse offence,” said Brandon Alexander. “We took that to heart. We knew we had to step up as a team, not just as a defence, but as a team. We did that. Even from the beginning of the season we knew we had it in us, we just didn’t put a full game together. Calgary… we had a first half where we played pretty well. There were a couple other games where we had a good first half and didn’t finish it. This one, defence, offence and special teams finished right to the end and that’s all that matters.”

The Bombers went through a stretch with losses to Ottawa, Calgary and then Saskatchewan in the Labour Day Classic in which they surrendered 1,336 yards and 10 touchdowns. In the three games since – the Banjo Bowl loss to the Riders and then the wins over Montreal and Edmonton – Winnipeg’s D has surrendered just 898 yards and only one TD.

“This is what we’re capable of,” said linebacker Adam Bighill. “This is what we’ve shown we can do. It’s not three quarters of a game… now we finished an entire game of executing. Before it was talking about, ‘Well, there were these five plays. If we can clean that up…’ That’s a big difference in who we can be and that was tonight with us cleaning things up.

“We knew they were the most explosive offence in the CFL and we couldn’t give up any explosions, any big-chunk plays. Duke had one near the end of the game, a decent catch worth 20-something, but that’s going to happen. For the most part, we limited what they wanted to do all night long. We had pressure on Mike, we forced throws early, we made him uncomfortable and the back end did a great job of helping give the front some cover sacks. Everything worked really well and it really was executing the gameplan to a ‘T’.”

ONE OF MANY DEFENDERS WHOSE NAME WAS FEATURED PROMINENTLY… on the stats page was Fogg, who returned an interception 73 yards for a touchdown and took a lateral 24 yards from Taylor Loffler after his pick, but also had three tackles, a fumble recovery, a forced fumble and returned five punts for 25 yards.

Here’s Fogg explaining what he saw on the Pick-6, his team-leading fourth interception of the year:

“I saw my guy run an out, I drove on the out and then I saw the ball coming out. Usually, you don’t really see that coming to the wide side like that, a deep out like that… I’m just glad I caught, glad I was in position and glad that I scored.”

Fogg was being modest in his post-game interview, although he was interrupted momentarily when Andrew Harris popped into the picture to hug him.

“We knew the type of offence we were going up against,” said Fogg. “It was good we were able to contain them, keep Reilly in the pocket because he’s known for extending a play and taking shots down the field. We got the win.”

NIC DEMSKI DID NOT SUIT UP ON SATURDAY… and that led to two changes in the receiving corps, with Drew Wolitarsky moving inside from his wideout position and rookie Daniel Petermann lining up at wide receiver. Both were productive, with Wolitarsky leading the Bombers with 51 receiving yards on four catches, while Petermann had two catches for 27 yards, including a 19-yarder to the goal line that set up a Chris Streveler TD plunge.

“That was close… I thought if I had one more push,” said Petermann. “But I saw a guy coming and was  just concerned about ball security at that point.”

Petermann has worked as a back-up for both Demski and Wolitarsky, and continues to flash the skills that had him ranked so highly heading into the 2018 CFL Draft before the Bombers grabbed him 26^th overall. And, quite clearly, he’s thrilled to have more of a role in the offence.

“It was awesome. It was a really fun, exciting time,” he said. “I was really happy about it. We got the win, so everything worked out. It’s encouraging, very encouraging for me. I’ve just got to keep going.”

THE PUNT BLOCK EARLY IN THE GAME BY MARCUS SAYLES… was a solid tone-setter for the Bombers, as it led to a Justin Medlock field goal and gave Winnipeg a 3-0 lead in hostile territory.

Sayles has a history of punt blocks, having set a school record at West Georgia with 13 in his career.

“I’ve been on the punt-return back and forth throughout the season,” said Sayles. “Coach knew about me throughout college and knows I could punt block when the opportunity presented itself. I had a short edge and it was just a straight line to the punter. I had to take advantage of it. Everybody did their job and I just got credit for it. It’s just about a good get-off. You’ve got to have a direct line to the punter and then when you get off untouched everything just works out. It’s a little bit different up here because you’ve got to be a yard off the ball and so a lot of punt blocks probably don’t happen.”

AND, FINALLY, THERE WAS SOME CRITICISM OF THE BOMBERS OFFENCE… even after a 30-3 win for generating only 20 points off six turnovers (the seventh turnover came on the game’s final play). But while Winnipeg managed just 239 yards total, they did win the time of possession with a five-minute advantage (32:21 to Edmonton’s 27:39) and put up two touchdowns in the score zone.

“Offensively, we struggled at times, especially in the run game,” said Andrew Harris, who finished with 73 yards on 20 carries. “They had a good gameplan and we didn’t execute the way we wanted to. I felt like I was fighting it throughout the majority of the game until that fourth quarter where I started to see it a little better and hit it. But our defence was lights out for us today.

“I’ve been preaching all year about having a three-phase game. There are going to be times when one is stronger and tonight the defence held it down for us, was able to score some points and put us in good position to get field goals. We were able to get some yardage in different ways.”

This match-up had been billed as a ‘statement game’ for both the Bombers and Eskimos. Asked afterward what kind of statement his squad might have made after a performance like that in a 30-3 spanking, Harris offered this:

“That even when it’s ugly we’re going to find a way to win. I think that’s the best I’ve seen our defence play all year, which is great right now. Defence wins championships, as they say, and if our defence can hold it down like that week in and week out that’s going to put us in a good situation to win football games. I feel like our offence can play better. Maybe that’s me being a perfectionist, but I just feel like we can play better football and be more productive than we were today.”