It was late July — just eight games into the Canadian Football League’s 2024 season — and already so many across the land were viewing the Winnipeg Blue Bombers as a cold cadaver ready to be carved up by the coroner in search of a cause of death.
The Blue Bombers were stumbling for a second time after an 0-4 start, as a modest two-game winning streak with decisions over Ottawa and Calgary was followed by losses to Saskatchewan and then Toronto in a mistake-heavy OT loss to the Argonauts that dropped the club to 2-6.
Sure, 10 games remained on the schedule, but the Blue Bombers were facing a home-and-home series with B.C., with the Lions then 5-2 and coming off a bye week.
A priest was clearing his throat to administer last rites. Next of kin had been notified and obituaries were being penned for a Blue Bombers outfit that had appeared in four consecutive Grey Cups, winning twice, and had entered the season still considered a championship contender.
And it’s here where we begin our annual Year in Review series of the Top 5 stories of 2024, with the early-season stumble from which the Blue Bombers seemed doomed to recover such a dominant part of this team’s story.
It had already been an offseason of significant change — Dru Brown, Rasheed Bailey, Jermarcus Hardrick, Jackson Jeffcoat, Geoff Gray, Demerio Houston, Jesse Briggs, Thiadric Hansen, Ricky Walker and Janarion Grant all exited either via free agency, trade or retirement — but the Blue Bombers still opened the year with the hope and promise of another run at a title.
Yet, that overtime loss at BMO Field in Toronto was a snapshot of everything that had gone wrong through the first two months of the season as the Blue Bombers turned the ball over five times, failed to convert on a third-and-one in the dying moments from the Argos 22-yard line and then saw Sergio Castillo miss a 41-yard field goal in overtime.
As we wrote that night from steamy Toronto: ‘the only category the Blue Bombers seem to lead the Canadian Football League right now is self-inflicted wounds.’
“We need to be better. We ALL need to be better,” said running back Brady Oliveira. “We need to take care of the football, that’s first and foremost. That’s the most important thing. We talk about it every single week. We came in at halftime and it’s close and it was going to come down to the team that played the cleanest was going to win the game.
“We are making too many mistakes. That needs to end. We need to be better. I can play a better game. I can’t put the ball on the ground, I’ve got to take care of the football. I’ve got to look in the mirror, everyone’s got to look in the mirror and ask how can you demand more from yourself and be better because your teammates deserve better.
“We’re losing. What are we doing? We know we can win games. We have the group to do it, we’re just making too many mistakes. We’ve got to go get better. It sucks, man.”
Just to recap, the early woes began as key players like Oliveira and all-star guard Pat Neufeld had missed much of training camp and 11 projected starters did not take a snap in the preseason. Then, receivers Kenny Lawler and Dalton Schoen were both lost to injury within the first three games — Schoen for the season — and, coupled with all that change, the Blue Bombers had dropped two games at home in their 2-6 start, lost to Ottawa by four points in a lightning-delayed contest they still had a shot at stealing in the dying moments, lost to B.C. by two points, to both Toronto and Calgary in extra time and in Saskatchewan in another performance in which they threw up all over themselves.
So, hell yeah, it wasn’t one thing that had gone wrong, it was everything.
Still, given the benefit of hindsight, we know how this movie unfolded over the next few weeks. There was no panic in Bomberland. No alarm bells were clanging. Instead, this bunch did what it had done so often through times of adversity dating back to 2016: it spit in both hands and got to work swinging the sledgehammer again.
“I think we can beat anybody in this league, there’s no doubt about that,” said quarterback Zach Collaros. “But we’ve got to start showing it.”
That was especially so with the doubleheader against the Lions on the horizon, followed by a home date against Hamilton and then the annual Labour Day Classic/Banjo Bowl doubleheader with Roughriders.
“The frustration is there, but you can’t be hard on your teammates,” said defensive end Willie Jefferson following the loss in Toronto that night. “You’ve got to hold them accountable, most definitely, but you don’t want to be pointing fingers and doing this or that. That mentality is not in our locker room. We’re always going to be together. Offence, defence, special teams — we’re always going to be together. Always.
“At the end of the day, we’re all we’ve got. From the outside looking in it might seem like somebody might do or say something, but from the inside we know what we need to do.
“We’ll watch the film. Everybody is going to see the mistakes we made and we’re going to grow from it.”
Next: Year in Review #4: The Turnaround, December 22nd
