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November 16, 2018

48-Hour Primer | West Final

The fix hasn’t been quick and there was certainly no elixir or waving of a mythical magic wand.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers defence heads into Sunday’s West Final in Calgary against the Stampeders now a respectable unit, and some would say, an emerging force in the Canadian Football League.

Second in points allowed to the Stampeders. Tied for first with Calgary in forced turnovers and the turnover ratio. Tied for first in sacks, and first overall for the lowest number of explosion plays – longer than 30 yards – allowed.

But to hear Adam Bighill explain it, this transformation didn’t come after this bunch collectively downed a vat of potion or sold its soul to Beelzebub. It’s been about the defence slapping on a hard hat and getting its hands dirty, because the unit that takes the field Sunday looks a whole lot different than the bunch that opened the season way back on June 14th.

How much better is this defence?

“It’s hard to put specific words on it or quantify it, other than it’s a feeling we have of continuity and understanding and belief in each other,” began Bighill. “That’s what the whole season is: building towards being a dominant defence. We’ve been able to put big steps together each week over the last third of the season to be able to become that defence.

“That’s more about a feeling we have playing together. You can’t just say you have it and show up on Sunday and expect it to be there. It’s something you still have to put the work in to make sure it shows up on Sunday. We’ve got to be humble enough to understand our success comes through hard work. This week has been a great week of energy and hard work. With that being said, we expect to go out there and get the job done, because we have put the work in.”

That explanation is hard to sum up in one simple sentence to slam onto a T-shirt. But Bighill likes to accompany a lot of his tweets with the hashtag #savage, and while that’s undoubtedly a personal motto, it also could be said it’s a representation of how this defence attacks opposition offences.

WATCH: WESTON DRESSLER

And it will certainly be tested again Sunday against Bo Levi Mitchell and the Stamps. But back to this transformation angle…

The Bombers defence opened the season under the microscope after back-to-back disappointments in the 2016 and 2017 West Semi-Finals. And since the opener, we’ve seen the emergence of rookie Marcus Sayles at halfback, with Anthony Gaitor moving from that spot to the strong-side linebacker/dime back spot.

Excluding the regular season finale loss in Edmonton in which the Bombers rested a few regulars, the club has given up just 88 points in the six games since the Banjo Bowl, an average of 14.7 points per game.

It hasn’t all been perfect, but it’s been damn good.

“The more time you spend together, the more opportunity you have to see things together, the more you grow,” Bighill explained. “You learn from mistakes. It’s foolish to never ever learn from a mistake.

“Down this back third of the season, we have shown we’re a team learning from mistakes. We’re playing much better football, we’re playing way more consistent. We’re not allowing home run, explosive plays. If you do that, you give yourself a chance and offences are going to struggle to drive the ball down the field consistently throughout the whole 60 minutes of the game. There’s no real point in going back and remembering where we were. It’s all about focusing on where we are now. All that stuff has been dealt with already. We are who we are now based on those experiences. That whole process has moulded us into what we are now.”

Where this defence is now is an intriguing place: they are confident – not Swaggerville confident – but still humble. Much of that comes from Bighill himself. This unit doesn’t step between the stripes just hoping to compete, it expects to dominate.

“There’s always confidence built up when you do something,” said Bighill. “If you’ve never done something before you wonder 1) Can you do it? 2) How do you do it? And 3) What’s it feel like to do it? That could be anything in any facet of life. All of a sudden you have success, you’ve done these things, and you build confidence. It’s a natural response to completion of your task and goals. With that being said, you have to be humble enough to understand why you’ve been successful.

“You know,” he added, taking a moment to gather another thought, “nothing in this league is a given. Too many good players. Too many good teams. Too much of all that to think you can just go out there and play and win. You have to prepare the right way, you’ve got to work hard and you’ve got to focus. Nothing is given. You’ve got to go take it.”


The Bombers finished their final full practice of the season at Investors Group Field on Friday – if they win Sunday, next week’s sessions will all be in Edmonton – behind closed doors. Here are some notes and quotes from today’s media availability before the team heads to Calgary Saturday afternoon…

OUCH UPDATE:

The Bombers will bring LB Jovan Santos-Knox to Calgary for the West Final, but head coach Mike O’Shea wasn’t tipping his hand as to whether the second-year starter would suit up against the Stamps. Santos-Knox injured his foot in the regular season finale and did not play in Regina last week. He was replaced by both Ian Wild and Kyrie Wilson in the defence, with the two pairing up to register six tackles, four special teams tackles, one tackle for a loss and a sack.

“That felt really good, just to be out there playing with your brothers and making some plays,” said Wilson, who dressed for only five games this year – and hadn’t suited up since mid-July until last week’s playoff game. “It wasn’t really that hard. I tried to stay focused, trust the process. I believe in God and how everything works out, so it was a matter of just staying ready. It definitely was a while between games. But when you get in there, it’s like everything starts coming back to you. It was a good time out there.”

Interestingly, Wilson was considered the leading candidate to line up at middle linebacker this season right up until the day the club added Adam Bighill – just a few days before the opening of training camp.

“I had to stay positive,” said Wilson. “Adam Bighill is a great player and so I just watched how he was playing, learned from him by asking him questions. All I could do was stay ready.”

He did. All season. And there is no one more appreciative of that than O’Shea.

“Sometimes you get in a position where it’s tough to get on a roster,” he said. “I mean, it would have looked different for Kyrie if we didn’t sign Adam. We talked about it the day we signed him, how things were going to shake out roster-wise. So obviously Kyrie is all in and he’s professional because he’s worked hard to make sure when his name was called, he was ready to go.

“He was really good (last week). That’s a credit to him making sure he’s engaged in the meetings and locked in out there at practice an making the most of whatever reps he was getting. We’ve talked about this a number of times, they’re all ones and we don’t separate those reps out there. But he would have gotten less reps than other guys, so he’s obviously made the most of them. I thought he was pretty darn good out there in Saskatchewan. He contributed and besides the stats lines, even on the plays where he didn’t record a stat, I thought he was pretty darn good.”

HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY:

Here’s Weston Dressler when asked if he was good to go on Sunday and why he needed a couple days off from practice:

“Just getting old,” he said with a grin. “I’m feeling good. Just needed a little break and hopefully the time off will refresh the legs a little more.”

TWO WORLDS COLLIDE:

The Bombers were the CFL’s least penalized team in 2018, but were also hit with five infractions totalling 96 yards last week, while having three players – DE Jackson Jeffcoat and OLs Sukh Chungh and Patrick Neufeld – fined by the league after the fact.

“We were the least-penalized team in the league two years in a row. That’s pretty damn good,” said O’Shea. “I want them to play within the rules, and I want them to be tough and physical. But we’re the least-penalized team in the league for a reason – we work damn hard at it.”

Bighill offered up a good take on walking that line, too.

“You try and toe that line,” said Bighill. “You don’t condone any late hits or illegal hits and those types of things. When you play this game you’ve got to play it aggressively and you’ve got to play with that nasty attitude. You don’t want to take that away from guys but at the same time there are situations when you have to protect each other out there. You need that intensity level at this stage of the game.”

One more on this, from Bighill:

“Football is a violent sport and we have a bunch of violent men in this locker room. We go out every single day to impose our will on people. Sometimes those things happen. We’ve just got to take them with a grain of salt and learn from them. We don’t preach anything dirty around here, but we do preach physical football. That’s going to be a byproduct of what happens.”

THE QB SAYS:

QB Matt Nichols was asked an interesting question earlier this week… Calgary QB Bo Levi Mitchell often says ‘We know who we are.’ That was presented to Nichols with the question, what would you say the Bombers are?

“We’re a talented football team playing well together, that care about each other,” he said. “We have a lot of good people in this locker room. There’s not one person I wouldn’t do anything for and that goes a long way in this sport when you truly care about the people next to you and you give everything you have to get across that finish line. That’s what championship teams are made of and I think we have that make up here and we want to make sure we don’t squander the opportunity.”