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September 22, 2019

Upon Further Review | WPG 37 MTL 38

Spencer Moore (80) of the Montreal Alouettes and Willie Jefferson (5) of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers during the CFL game at Percival Molson Stadium in Montreal, QC, Saturday, Sept. 21, 2019. (Photo: Johany Jutras)

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It was both a masterpiece and grotesque rendering at the same time, like staring at the Mona Lisa and seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s brilliant brush strokes on one half of the portrait and a crude stick-figure scribbling with a googly eye and splayed teeth on the other.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers were at their very best Saturday afternoon against the Montreal Alouettes in building a 34-10 lead in the first half. But it was the very ugly – especially an epic fourth-quarter escape that saw them outscored 21-0 – that is going to leave both physical and emotional scars.

The ‘Montreal Meltdown’ and surrendering that 24-point advantage now enters the Bombers record books for all the wrong reasons as the biggest blown lead in franchise history. Just to hammer that home, that’s a new mark for a franchise that has been in existence dating back to 1930.

“It’s sickening,” said Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea afterward, as Alouettes players and fans lingered on the field afterward celebrating. “But it’s all of us. Coaches, we’ve got to look at what we called and what position we put guys in, be hard with the grading and make sure we’re getting better.

“The No. 1 thing to do now is learn from it, right? We saw this happen the night before in the Hamilton game (against Edmonton, in which they built a 24-0 lead before winning 30-27) and they managed to drive down and score the points to take it back.

“These games happen. You witness them all the time in the CFL. This was a big comeback for them and we didn’t do enough to stop them.”

That much was visible to all who witnessed Saturday’s collapse. But it’s the why, the when and the how that must be dissected in the post-mortem. And there’s a lot to dissect for a team that scored touchdowns on each of their first four possessions and carried a 20-point lead (37-17) into the fourth quarter before completely unravelling.

And as safety Jeff Hecht said so succinctly post-game, it’s the fourth time this year the Bombers have been in position to close down a game in the fourth quarter – the loss in Toronto, the win in Edmonton, the Labour Day Classic defeat and the Montreal Meltdown.

More from Hecht:

“I wish I knew why. This is the fourth time now we’ve been in a similar situation and three of them we ended up on the wrong side of it and on one we managed to hold on. I don’t know what’s going on and if I did , if anybody did, I guess we would have fixed it before the Labour Day game.

“Whether it’s self-scouting or guys self-assessing their own will power or maybe coaches assessing schematics or us as players having a higher sense of awareness for situational football… if you’ve got an idea I’d love to hear it, because four in a row is an ugly habit now so we’ve got to figure out what the hell is going on.”

More on the Bombers’ colossal collapse in our weekly post-game collection of notes and quotes we call ‘UPON FURTHER REVIEW’…


A TIP OF THE CHAPEAU TO… Alouette QB Vernon Adams Jr. for rallying his troops in the victory on Saturday. He finished 27 of 43 for 488 yards with four touchdowns – and also one rushing – against one interception and one fumble that led to a scoop-and-score by Kyrie Wilson.

A further examination of the numbers for Adams Jr. will leave the Bombers cursing out loud in the film room.

Consider this: of Adams Jr’s 27 completions, 20 were for 10 yards or more with eight covering 20 yards or more. Including in that were completions of 44, 31, 41 and 60 yards. And here’s the number that really exemplifies both his playmaking ability and the Bombers’ ineptitude in defending him: 12 of his 27 completions converted second downs, with eight of those 12 coming on situations that were of 10 yards or more.

“They have a quarterback who can escape the pocket, make plays and run around and that’s exactly what he did,” said Bombers defensive end Craig Roh. “So, next time we play these guys we’ve got to focus more on how we can prevent him from running around and extending plays, because that really killed us in this game.

“It sucks, especially being up like 100 points in the first half. We let them creep back into it and you feel like it’s a leaky well and it’s just not stopping. Obviously we’re going to be very critical of ourselves, look at the film and come back with a better game plan.”

EVEN WITH ALL THEIR SECOND-HALF WOES… the Bombers were in position to lock down the win inside the final minute. The Alouettes were facing a second-and-10 from their own 16 with 55 seconds remaining, but Adams Jr. connected with Jake Wieneke for seven yards, then ran for 12 yards on a third and three.

That was followed by a 60-yard completion to Quan Bray that flipped the field in a hurry, with Adams, Jr. then finding Wieneke for the game-winning 15-yard TD with six seconds remaining.

“We had a little bit of a bust on the back end on a hurry-up count from them and we didn’t get the call echoed around all the way, so we had a bust,” said Adam Bighill of the last drive. “Those things can happen in crunch time and those are the things that really become disappointing.

“It’s finish. We’ve been in this situation before this year and we’ve got to finish. We can’t take leads for granted, we’ve got to be able to play all the way through and continue to make plays and when we’re called on to make plays, we’ve got to make them.”

KEEP AN EYE ON THIS IN THE COMING DAYS… to see if there is any follow-up from CFL HQ. But it’s worth noting Adams Jr. was charged with ‘general roughness’ on the play, although clearly Bighill and others felt he should have been ejected.

UNDERSTANDABLY, THE BOMBERS’ CRAMPED LOCKER ROOM… at Molson Stadium was morgue-like after the game. And while some suggested the Bombers ‘took their foot off the gas’, there were others who straight-armed that notion to the ground.

“I mean, this is professional football. We all know we have to play four quarters against every team,” said Bombers quarterback Chris Streveler. “We shouldn’t need to be reminded of that and I don’t think we need to be. We just made too many mistakes.

“We’ll definitely learn from this. It’s a tough game to swallow. It’s the 24-hour rule. We’ll get in tomorrow, learn from it and get better.”

“I don’t honestly know. I don’t think a single guy in here goes, ‘Oh, let’s relax now. We don’t have to play as hard,’” added Roh. “Every guy in this room cares too much to let up, but you’ve just got guys on their side… they’re quarterback extending plays, making plays and they slowly creep back in.”

THE EVIDENCE OF THAT IS in the Bombers’ drive chart, illustrated below:

Winnipeg’s first four offensive possessions resulted in touchdowns, and 291 net yards on 25 plays. Streveler lamented the interception he threw late in the first half that led to an Alouettes TD, but in the final 30 minutes the Bombers had six offensive possessions resulting in four punts, a field goal and a missed field goal.

And in a game that became a track meet, the Bombers clearly needed a big kick at the end.

“We looked unstoppable. Those first three drives, four drives, we went down and were scoring,” said Bombers running back Andrew Harris. “I don’t know if they made that many adjustments, our execution just went away a little bit and we just took our foot off the gas for some reason. We’ve just got to learn from this.”

THE HARRIS RETURN WAS ONE OF THE JUICY SUB-PLOTS but was lost in the Bombers collapse. He rushed 12 times for 76 yards and had another 112 yards on five receptions, but also only had five carries for 17 yards in the second half.

“It was a great personal game, but I’ve got to look back at the tape and see where I could have been better to help my team win,” he said. “Honestly, I was a little tired in the first quarter because I had been out for a little bit. There was a positive and a negative there. I’m just looking forward to being back more and in the groove of things. The loss aside, this was a solid step forward for myself.”

Asked about all the chatter before the game involving Alouettes end John Bowman, Harris said:

“I’m honestly over that s—t, I don’t even want to talk about it anymore. It was good to be out here today and the loss was unfortunate.”

And when he was asked if he had any interactions with Bowman on the field during the game, Harris added: “I don’t even know. Did John Bowman play today? I don’t think he even made a play, other than that last one. Good job, John. I’m done.”

AND, FINALLY… the last word goes to Bombers end Willie Jefferson, who offered a post-game comment that most certainly will be echoed in the days ahead in Bomberland:

“We’ve got to live with this right now,” he said. “It’s not something we want to happen, obviously, but the game’s over now.

“It’s just like the Labour Day game. It’s something to learn from. We’ve got to move forward. We’re still in a good position in the West, but these losses that are supposed to be wins… when we come out here and take an ‘L’ the way we did, man, it’s tough.”