The men who make a living on the defensive side of the ball for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers want more. Much more.
There’s a relentless pursuit of perfection in football that simply isn’t achievable – no game is perfect, after all – but that won’t stop the Bombers defenders from continuing that chase. We got a snippet of that in the immediate aftermath of last Thursday’s 19-6 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats when Willie Jefferson offered this assessment:
“We did a good job. Could’ve been better. Could’ve been off the field a lot more. Defensive line putting pressure on (Jeremiah) Masoli, as we should. Could’ve been better. DBs did a great job of sticking to the receivers, sticking to (Brandon) Banks. Could’ve been better. But we came out on top – 1-0.”
We’re not here to argue with Jefferson – the Canadian Football League’s reigning Most Outstanding Defensive Player. If he says the defence could have been better after limiting the Ticats’ high-octane offence to six points – that coming on the opening drive – then, absolutely, he’s right. Still, some historical context could be provided here to showcase just how good the Bombers ‘D’ has been dating back to the playoff run of 2019.
Over the last four games – the three playoff wins and last week’s season opener – the Bombers have surrendered six, 12, 13 and 14 points. That’s just 45 points over four games in a league where offences often light up scoreboards.
Some other numbers from the last four Bombers games to bite into:
- Winnipeg has outscored its opposition 107-55
- The Bombers have a 18:1 turnover ratio
- Offences are averaging just 328.8 yards per game, including 234.8 through the air and 94.5 along the ground
And here’s the most telling stat: you have to go back to 1985 for a stretch in which the Bombers defence limited its opponents to 15 points or under in four consecutive games. That year the Bombers knocked off Saskatchewan 18-10 on Labour Day, then followed with a 42-14 victory over Ottawa, a 24-0 blanking of Montreal and a 49-3 spanking of Saskatchewan.
Rewinding to last week, consider this: the Ticats opened with an eight-play, 89-yard drive that culminated in a touchdown. After that they had 13 possessions, nine of which ended in a punt, two ending with Bombers interceptions, another on a forced fumble and one on a conceded safety. Over those drives, Hamilton mustered just 191 yards of offence.
Yowza.
“You don’t like to start off the season where it’s six or eight plays and all of a sudden they’ve got a touchdown,” said Bombers defensive coordinator Richie Hall in a Zoom call with the media on Tuesday. “But I thought they recovered well and played a solid game. Our whole thing is we want to get better each week. And going into the playoffs we want to continue to get better and then we’ll see what happens at the end.”
Hall said key to the stretch of four dominant games by the defence dating back to late 2019 has been the work at the line of scrimmage. That, in turn, has meant a drop in the amount of ‘explosion’ plays for big yardage by opposition offences.
“They’re going to make big plays here in the CFL, but we’ve also got to make our fair share of big plays.” he said. “That’s the biggest thing: we’ve been playing a high level consistently for four quarters and everything starts with up front. When you control the line of scrimmage it makes things a lot easier defensively.
“When I talk about making plays, it’s not interceptions or anything like that, it’s making the tackles. Instead of them getting seven yards, they’re getting five yards and they’re forced to punt. We get our hands up and disrupt the pass or knock the ball loose.”
Even with all this, the Bombers defenders collectively believe there’s more to give, more room to grow. Again, it’s that endless chase for more.
“I mean. you can do more in every single game,” said defensive back Brandon Alexander. “By no far stretch was that a clean game. We had a LOT of adjustments, a lot of things to go over. But one day at a time.”
As to what may have changed over this last run of dominance, Alexander offered this:
“Nothing. Nothing’s changed. We still abide by what we stand for, our standards. Nothing’s changed. People have changed, movement has changed with players changing their positions. But what we stand for and what we abide by, that’s never going to change and we want to continue that.
“We come in, we buy in and we’re just hard-nosed on every single play. Every single play is our like our last play that we’ll ever play again. That’s how we take every single snap. Whether it’s the run, whether it’s the pass we’re going to make sure we’re going to be stout, we’re going to be running to the ball, all 12 of us. We just have a standard.”
