Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback Matt Nichols (15) on the bench after his final possession during second half CFL football game action against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Hamilton, Ont. on Friday, July 26, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Power
GUELPH – It was billed not just as the Canadian Football League’s game of the week, but a potential Grey Cup preview and a clash between two of the loop’s heavyweights.
And it wasn’t long after the opening bell clanged Friday night that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers took a straight left to the chops, followed quickly by a series of combinations that left the league’s previously only unbeaten team on wobbly legs.
While the Bombers would throw punches back right to the final whistle, the tone was clearly set early by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, who were full credit in a 23-15 victory, despite losing starting quarterback Jeremiah Masoli in the first quarter.
“To be honest with you, this can be good for us,” reasoned Bombers defensive back Brandon Alexander afterwards inside a subdued visitors dressing room. “I mean, yes, we want to win every game, but we got punched in the mouth early. We came out ready to go, but they hit us on a couple.
“This will make our team closer. This will help us understand a situation like this and make sure we’re not in it again. We’ll watch film, we’ll see what we did wrong, but the sun will come up tomorrow. Like I always say, win or lose, we’ll put that one on the tab. That game is done, there’s nothing we can do about it now, we can’t go back in time. This is a long season. We took that lick, but we’re not knocked out.”
The loss ended the third-best start to a season in Bombers history. The 1960 squad opened 10-0, finished 14-2, but lost to Edmonton in the West Final. The 1939 Bombers cranked out eight straight wins to open the season en route to a 10-2 record and then a victory over the Ottawa Rough Riders in the Grey Cup.
That historical data is of little interest to the men in the Bombers locker room. And so – as has been their custom win or lose – this one will be quickly flushed before the Bombers prepare for Thursday’s game in Toronto against the Argonauts.
The team will have meetings and review the ugly evidence on film on Saturday and then be back on the field at Alumni Stadium at the University of Guelph – where they are camped out for the next few days – Monday morning.
“The first step now is to look at the film and then start working on cleaning up our mistakes,” said receiver Kenny Lawler. “We’re a good football team. We know that. We believe we’re great. But in order to be great you’ve got to fix your mistakes, pick it up from there and just keep working.”
NICHOLS DIDN’T MINCE WORDS… when he met with the media following the game, immediately accepting the blame for his poorest game since last year’s Banjo Bowl. He entered the game with an active streak of 19 straight completions, but had that snapped on the first pass attempt when a shovel to Lucky Whitehead was dropped. His next attempt was intercepted and returned to the one-yard line, helping give Hamilton a 14-0 just seven minutes into the game.
“For whatever reason, on two of the plays (interceptions) the ball kinda came out of the side of my hand,” Nichols explained. “I had open guys and was on the right read, but the ball came off the side of my hand twice and went 10 yards over where I was trying to throw it. It doesn’t ever happen in like one in a thousand throws, but it happened twice tonight. It’s brutal, but that’s the way this position goes. And that first one was the difference in the game score-wise, momentum-wise, everything. I had a guy open on a curl route and the ball just floated out of the side of my hand. It’s unfortunate.”
“I’ve been on a lot of really good football teams and a lot of the best teams I’ve been on, sometimes a loss like this isn’t the worst thing to bring the realization that you’re not just going to go out and beat everyone by 30 points,” Nichols added. “This will be a great learning experience for everyone, including myself, that we need to play better football to win football games.”
SOME OBSERVERS WERE POINTING FINGERS AT THE DEFENCE… during and after the loss, but after an iffy start – Hamilton took their opening possession and drove the ball 76 yards on eight plays for a TD – the ‘D’ settled in and was steady.
Granted, Hamilton’s offence looked significantly different after Jeremiah Masoli exited the game with a suspected knee injury – he was six of seven for 59 yards, with an interception on a two-point convert attempt – but the defence did limit the Ticats to 82 yards along the ground and 153 through the air.
Consider this: Dane Evans, Masoli’s replacement, finished 13 of 25 for 94 yards with zero TDs and an interception. Not including the kneel downs at the end of the first half and the game, Hamilton ran 41 offensive plays with Evans at the controls. The longest was a 22-yard completion to Brandon Banks near the end of the third quarter and 16 plays resulted in gains of less than five yards.
“We came back in the second half, came back composed and stopped the run,” said Bombers defensive end Willie Jefferson. “But we just couldn’t really get the takeaways that we wanted when we got to the end. We tried to get those quick two and outs to get the ball to the offence, but we needed to get some turnovers to get them field position and make it easier for them.
“But Hamilton came out and played a tight and precise game. With their quarterback going down early in the game, their backup came in and just made the plays he can make. They played a good game.”
THERE WILL BE NO INJURY UPDATES… until the Bombers return to practice on Monday, but the game did take a toll, with Darvin Adams and Anthony Gaitor exiting in the first half and Drew Wolitarsky in the fourth quarter.
That led to some lineup shuffling, with returner Kenny Walker and Daniel Petermann moving into the receiving corps and Chris Humes taking up Gaitor’s spot. That could open up the door for a return to the starting lineup for Chris Matthews, who has been a healthy scratch for the last two games.
The Bombers did get Adam Bighill back into the lineup after he had missed three games due to injury and he finished with two tackles.
“There was no tentativeness,” Bighill said. “I mean, there are always plays you want back and I’m always in search of a perfect game that I’m probably never going to be able to play. But, that’s what keeps me getting better and improving. I’m always with that mindset. You take learning points from every single game, and for me, I felt fantastic, was flying around and felt very comfortable.”
THE BOMBERS HAVE HIT THE ONE-THIRD MARK OF THE SEASON AT 5-1… tied with the Ticats with the best record in the CFL. That was lost in the intermediate aftermath of a loss by O’Shea, who was asked to evaluate the first third of the year.
“I don’t,” he said. “I look at this as a loss tonight. We’re so quick to move on (Saturday) to Toronto. We’d better be, right? It’s a short week and we’d better be physically ready to go and we’ve got to correct some mistakes and we’ve got to get moving on to Toronto.
“If we spend too much time dwelling on this loss or looking at what we’ve done… I don’t break the season into third, anyways. That’s wasting time. We’ll get this looked at quickly, the guys won’t be happy and we’ll move on.”
Nichols, meanwhile, did offer a bigger-picture take.
“The first third of the year has been great,” offered Nichols. “We’re sitting in the position we want to be in. We could really only be one game better than where we are. We’re happy with where we are positioning-wise, but we’re also not happy with how tonight went. We know there are two teams behind us that are 4-2, so we’d better get back on the winning side of things and that starts (Saturday) when we get back to work.”
AND FINALLY… it will be regroup and reload for the Bombers when they return to work in preparations for Thursday’s game in Toronto. That will mark the end of a five-game run against East Division before the team then has five straight through the Banjo Bowl against West Division rivals: Calgary and B.C. in back-to-back home dates on August 8th and 15th, a visit to Edmonton on August 23rd, followed by the annual Labour Day Classic/Banjo Bowl doubleheader against Saskatchewan.
The Bombers get their chance for redemption against Hamilton on September 27th, a Friday night home date at IG Field.
“The first thing some of the older guys said when we came into the locker room tonight was that the goal wasn’t to go undefeated, the goal is to win the Grey Cup,” explained Jefferson. “We’ll get this loss out of everybody’s mind. We’re still moving forward. We’ll focus on Toronto now. This game is over. We played a good Hamilton team. They’ve got to come see us in a couple of months.
“We’ll take care of the rest of our business out east and when they come out west we’ll try and give them some of what they gave us here.”
