The Blue Bombers fell to 8-8 after Saturday's 25-20 loss to the Elks in Edmonton; photos by Cameron Bartlett
There’s a point in every Canadian Football League season when the evidence has piled up enough to get a true and concise read on a team. All its strengths and weaknesses are clearly established, as are its paths to victory and its flaws which too often lead to defeat.
And so, 19 weeks and 16 games into the season it’s safe to say the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are exactly what their record is — an 8-8 team which one week can lift hopes and raise eyebrows with superlative play, and then the next leave everyone perplexed and spitting out a string of curses.
Case in point, the last two weeks for this bunch — a 40-3 spanking of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats before the bye which had Bomberland bumping again followed by Saturday’s 25-20 loss to the Edmonton Elks that just felt like the team had stumbled into a party and promptly stuck a big, fat needle into every damn balloon.
Needing a win to clinch a playoff spot and bury the Elks, Winnipeg instead dropped its guard and took a couple more punches than it delivered, exiting the Alberta capital with a busted lip and black eye.
So, yes, this is who they are and this is who they’ve been.
The silver lining? There’s still time to get this right when it matters most, even if the runway is shortening.
“The key now is to remember that everything we want and need is still in front of us,” reasoned veteran defensive back Deatrick Nichols in a chat with bluebombers.com after the game. “We can’t take the loss too badly, just as if we had won we wouldn’t have been celebrating right now.
“Like I said, everything is still right there in front of us. This is the time of the year where you can see all that, but you really have to focus in on what is exactly in front of you right now, not anything too far in the future.
“So, we’ve got Sask next and a short week. We’ve just got to get rolling again.”
There are just two opportunities to get rolling again, beginning with Friday’s home date against the Roughriders and then the regular-season finale a week later against the Montreal Alouettes.
In many ways, the opponent doesn’t matter because — as was the case Saturday — Blue Bombers biggest obstacle is often getting in its own way with turnovers and critical breakdowns in critical moments. The loss to the Elks was the fifth by eight points or less and so often in recent years those were the games this team was winning rather than fumbling away.
“All three phases, we just need to be better all round. We’ve got to figure out a way a win,” said future hall of famer Stanley Bryant, a man who has seen some things in this league. “Even when things are going wrong we’ve got to find a way to compete and find a way.
“The message now is to look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out how to win games. It doesn’t matter how it looks, but there’s going to be some adversity in every game, and we’ve got to figure out how to take the momentum back and win games. I’ve been doing this for a long time. We’ve got to figure that out heading into the playoffs.”
ICYMI, our Game Recap is here:
And what follows is the rest of this week’s Upon Further Review…
STANDINGS/SCHEDULE WATCH…
The loss didn’t just mean a missed opportunity to lock up a playoff spot, it also makes the path to a home playoff date extremely difficult. Nothing is official yet but if the Blue Bombers can get into the Grey Cup derby, they’ll likely have to take their act on the road for a divisional semifinal, either through the West or as a crossover team in the East.
The Riders, at 12-4, have locked up top spot in the West while the B.C. Lions have clinched a playoff spot. After that it’s a messy mix of determining which team has won season series and tiebreakers. Here’s what left for the Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Blue Bombers and Elks:
*Clinched playoff spot
Lions (9-7)*
Road (1): Saskatchewan, Oct. 25th
Home (1): Edmonton, Oct. 17th
Note: lost season series vs. Wpg (0-2); won season series vs. Cal (2-0).
Stampeders (9-7)
Road (1): Edmonton, Oct. 24th
Home (1): Toronto, Oct. 18th
Note: Won season series vs.Wpg (3-0); lost season series to B.C. (0-2).
Blue Bombers (8-8)
Home (2): Saskatchewan, Oct. 17th; Montreal, Oct. 25th
Note: won season series vs. B.C. (2-0); lost season series to Stamps (0-3); split season series vs. Edm (1-1) but hold the points differential tiebreaker by eight points.
Elks (7-9)
Road (1): B.C., Oct. 17th
Home (1): Calgary, Oct. 24th
Note: Lost the season series to B.C. (0-2 with one remaining); even with the Stamps 1-1 with one remaining; split with the Blue Bombers but lost the tiebreaker on points.
ONE OF THE STORYLINES COMING OUT OF THE GAME… will be the status of receiver Nic Demski for Friday’s game against the Riders and, potentially, beyond. Winnipeg’s leading receiver — he went over the 1,000-yard mark for the third consecutive season with a five-yard catch — exited the game just before halftime as he grabbed at his right leg/hamstring as he ran a deep route.
Demski spent the second half out of uniform on the sidelines, so there is that, but any snaps he’s not on the field immensely hampers the offence’s productivity. Said Pokey Wilson: “Demski is like the glue in the receiver room, so it definitely did feel different. But we had our rookie, Joey (Corcoran), he did a great job being able to fill in in the spot and know where he’s going.”
“Joey was able to practice all week, which I think helped,” said Zach Collaros. “But, yeah, I don’t want to discredit Nic Demski at all. We can look back at today, but any time he’ not on the field it hurts our offence.”
If he can’t go, the team could turn to Corcoran or Gavin Cobb, both Canadians, or tinker with the ratio to get Keric Wheatfall or Cam Echols onto the roster.
Stay tuned on this one because a receiving corps already minus Dalton Schoen can ill afford to lose another of Collaros’ favourite targets.
THREE NUMBERS WHICH STOOD OUT… after a second glance at the stats package, which can be found here:
1 The Blue Bombers defence limited Edmonton just 307 net yards of offence, including just 142 yards passing by Cody Fajardo, who went 13-of-24. That’s the lowest passing yardage by an opposition QB against Winnipeg this season and the lowest since holding the Lions to just 86 in a 25-0 shutout last August.
The Elks did their damage along the ground with 165 yards rushing, including touchdowns by Fajardo and Justin Rankin — the latter on a 64-yard gallop on a third-and-two gamble. Rankin finished with 138 yards on 18 carries.
“We lost our edge,” said head coach Mike O’Shea of the third-and-two TD. “We jumped inside all the blocks. We needed a guy on that edge. Run plays only make yards one of two ways: either we’re out of our gap or we miss a tackle. So, that one we were out of our gap.
“(Rankin) is hard to tackle. He’s hard to wrap up. And then when you miss him once, you stop your feet because you’re worried about missing him again and you start reaching and then he’s through your arms in a heartbeat. We’ve just got to get back to fundamentally tackling through guys and not be afraid of missing.”
2 Returner Trey Vaval was busy Saturday with three punt returns for 23 yards, three kickoff returns for 65 yards, and a missed field goal return he took back for 58 yards. Vaval now has 329 yards in missed field goal returns this year a total which not only leads the CFL, but has established a new Blue Bombers record, eclipsing the old mark of 277 set by Albert Johnson III in 2000.
3 And grotesque number we need to trot out again because it’s so telling for the ’25 Blue Bombers: the team was a minus-3 in the turnover differential Saturday night. In Winnipeg’s eight wins this season the team has a +11 turnover differential and in the eight losses that number is now a frightening -22.
THE POKEY WILSON TD GRAB IS WORTH ONE MORE LOOK… because it was so sensational.
HOW DID HE CATCH THAT#ForTheW pic.twitter.com/V8YQbHxLoV
— Winnipeg Blue Bombers (@Wpg_BlueBombers) October 12, 2025
“Zach threw a great ball and gave me an opportunity to go make a play on the ball. That’s all I was trying to do — make a play for my team to put us in a better situation and come back and win the game,” said Wilson after the game. “In my head it’s my ball or nobody’s ball. I was fighting to not let the defender get the pick, but it ended up being a catchable ball after the bounce.
“I’d rather a win over that catch, honestly, but that’s a great catch in my rankings. I’ll always remember one of those; catches like that don’t happen often so I’ll always remember that.
AND FINALLY… thanks for reading this far and for those who have made it to the bottom and want to see the video evidence of the loss to the Ticats, we have it here with the condensed game:
