Need to Know | Week 5

Brady Oliveira’s football resumé will highlight the obvious, from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back being the reigning Canadian Football League Most Outstanding Player, two-time Most Outstanding Canadian Player and two-time rushing champ.

There are a ton of factors in play here, of course, from his obvious skillset to the hours upon hours of sweat equity. There’s also this: the older a guy gets, the more he learns to roll with the punches and better able to handle adversity.

That came up Sunday after Oliveira had put in a full practice — his first since injuring his shoulder in the first series of the season opener against the B.C. Lions on June 12th.

“It’s good to be back out here. Obviously, it sucks to be on the sidelines watching. I’m itching to get back out here,” Oliveira said Sunday.

“You put so much work into this; there are so many hours that go into this to be at your best so you can play at a high level. Maybe it’s because it happened so quickly… I put so much work in in the offseason to come into training camp ready and then the first game comes along and it’s ‘boom’, you’re out.

“I feel like I haven’t had the chance to get going yet so that’s why it feels better to be out here. I haven’t had some games under my belt here where I had to miss a couple. It was right off the bat.”

Oliveira missed all but the first series of the first game and then the last two victories over the Lions and Edmonton Elks, with rookies Matthew Peterson and Quinton Cooley capably stepping up as his replacement.

He said he has spent the last couple of weeks attacking his rehab under the supervision of Blue Bombers head athletic therapist Al Couture and his staff and the hope is if there are so setbacks in the next couple of days, he could be good to go for this Thursday’s matchup with the Calgary Stampeders in southern Alberta.

Now, here’s where the maturity part comes in for Oliveira. Earlier in his career, missing time would have eaten him up mentally. Now with having more miles on his treads and understanding how to handle things, missing a couple of games isn’t going to have him cursing the heavens daily from sunrise to sunset.

“You need to flush it as quick as you can,” he said. “When you’re battling an injury, you can give yourself some grace and allow yourself to be a little bit frustrated. That’s OK, because you do put a lot of work in and when an injury happens like that and you have it taken away from you where you can’t go out and compete with your guys, yeah, it’s OK to be frustrated. But it’s very important to flush it, whether it’s 24 or 48-hours max.

“With this injury I learned a lot about myself through the short rehab process. I think while I was able to recover extremely fast in my mind was because I just had a really good mindset going into this. I was just continuing to feed my mind positive thoughts throughout this and when you do that you allow your central nervous system to be at peace and be calm and it allows you to recover faster. That’s what I did and that’s what helped.”

Asked to elaborate on what he had learned about himself, he added:

“I’ve matured a lot in many aspects of my life. I had injuries earlier in my career and especially my ankle in my rookie year. I was in my feelings and had lots of dark days… it was a tough time that I went through with my ankle injury.

“There’s been lots of growth and maturation, which I’m very proud about myself. Again, I think that’s why I’ve healed really fast — it’s taking that stress off your back, having laughs, coming into work with a positive mindset, positive attitude and just control what you can control. I’ve been doing everything I can possibly do to make sure I get back out here as quick as I can. If you do that, there’s no complaints.

“… I’ve worked extremely hard to get where I am and the position I’m in, I really don’t take it for granted. And when it gets taken away from you for a short time you really start to miss it and you really understand how special it is — not even just the position, but how special this organization is; this team, the group of men that I get to work with every single day. You just miss being on the field and just hanging out with your boys.”

Oliveira wasn’t on the road trip to Vancouver for the club’s second game to be on the sidelines. But he was there in last Thursday’s win over the Elks playing a different role.

“Thursday was my first time watching a game like that and being Coach Brady on the sidelines,” he said with a grin. “I had an earpiece on, a quarterback wristband and was on the IPad with them on the bench.

“It was an interesting perspective for me because I’ve never had that experience before. I was trying to pour all my knowledge into them. Obviously, when there’s live bullets flying at you it’s good to have someone in your ear that mayb e has soome experience they can share and some wisdom. That’s all I was doing. At the end of the day I told them, ‘Play your game. You’re here for a reason’ but was also giving them some little nuggets here and there of maybe what I see and what I would do. They did a great job.”

Just for the record, the Blue Bombers haven’t confirmed that Oliveira has been green-lighted to return. Head coach Mike O’Shea said that decision won’t be made until after Tuesday’s practice. He also added that next week’s bye will not be a factor in determining when Oliveira is good to go.

“We’ve always worked with that — if they’re good to go, they’re good to go,” he said. “I can’t remember a time where we’ve said, ‘Ah, the bye week’s coming up, why not another week?’ Al and his medical staff are so good at what they do, if they’re cleared to play, they’re cleared to play.”

FYI: WR Nic Demski, who had two TDs last week and now has four on the season, was suited up on Sunday but limited… P Jamieson Sheahan was in attendance, but did not handle any punting chores. Sergio Castillo and defensive tackle Devin Adams — who punted in college — took turns punting… DB Ethan Ball, who injured his hand during training camp, was back practising for the first time on Sunday.