Blue Bombers head coach Mike O'Shea meeting with the media on Monday; photos by Cameron Bartlett
There are questions begging for answers immediately and others that will require more much more time and deeper thought.
All that said, as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers football think-tank begins to roll up its collective sleeves after Saturday’s loss to the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League’s Eastern Semi-Final — two weeks shy of the 112th Grey Cup right here in their back yards — the most important question needs addressing ASAP:
Who is going to be chasing those answers, both in the short term and long term with GM Kyle Walters and head coach Mike O’Shea both on expiring contracts?
O’Shea, the man who has been at the helm since 2014 and is the winningest coach in franchise history, met with the media on Monday — Walters will do the same later in the week — and addressed a variety of questions/issues, first and foremost his own future.
“You understand in the last decade or however long it’s been I’ll never talk about my contract status to the media, I’m never going to negotiate in the media,” he said. “These conversations happen with myself and Wade (Miller, Blue Bombers President and CEO) and Kyle, shortly.”
And when asked if he was optimistic he would be back in 2026, he replied: “I’m optimistic about everything. I expect to have some good conversations shortly.
“… I’ve been here for 12 years. I haven’t left yet. I’ve always said this is a great community and people that just pass through don’t understand it. But people that spend any amount of time here realize what the city is and the community is. In terms of a sporting community, it’s awesome — the Bomber fans, especially, throughout the province are unbelievable. Throughout the country the Bomber fans are unbelievable.”
The top sound bites from O’Shea’s media session, in no particular order, which can be watched in its entirety here:
On the sense he’s getting from players as he works through exit meetings:
“I can tell you exactly what it’s like. You lose and the more you mull it over on the plane and then you can’t sleep and then the sky is falling. And then you show up (the next day) and your entire team is in the theatre room, you say a couple words and all you hear is a gradual groundswell of conversation and camaraderie and the guys stick around for 10-12 hours just buying more time together.
“And you’re like, ‘Yup, we’re all right.’ That’s the bottom line — the sky isn’t falling. We’ll be just fine and we’ve got a great group of guys in here that make sure of that.”
On the offence:
O’Shea was asked several questions about the offence, which finished seventh in scoring and last in passing in 2025. In addressing the question about what he wished he could have done differently, he said he wished he would have been a ‘better support system for the offence’, especially after Jarious Jackson was not available during training camp for personal reasons and then during the season.
“I’m not going to design plays but I think I could have been better with them and helped them out a little more,” he said. “A hard look back, I’d want to be doing that.”
He also addressed the comments from Zach Collaros in his media session on Sunday in which the veteran quarterback spoke of the offence repping plays in training camp they never got to the season and never finding plays they could trust in certain situations.
“That’s a bigger project than me answering that right now. It’s certainly something he brought up and I wouldn’t be a head coach if I didn’t look into that. But that’s a much longer study. We have every single play we ran in training camp and every single play we ran in the season (on film) and it’s something to look at.
“… I think that’s an assessment at the end of the year. When you’re in it, I don’t think you’re thinking that way. You sit back after and that’s the way he feels. You have to respect that. I mean, Zach is super smart and one of the best quarterbacks to ever play in our league. That’s a conversation I would have with him.”
Criticisms of the offence popped up in public comments by players on a handful of occasions this season and O’Shea weighed in when asked if he was concerned players were voicing that frustration through the season.
“It’s one of those things that the players know when they say those things I’m the one who has to clean all that mess up,” he said. “I also think there was some frustration in their own level of play, too. They wanted things to go better and it wasn’t quite looking the way they wanted it to look or what they expected. People are searching and especially at the beginning of the year — the first five, six, seven games — the whole team was trying to search for something to grab onto and search for their identity and search for those three-phase wins. But that does not concern me. I think they did a good job of coming together as a team as the season went on.”
O’Shea was also asked that while there are growing pains in any position in the first-year on the job, did first-year offensive coordinator Jason Hogan show enough to be brought back in 2026.
“He’s a first-year OC, but he’s a long-time coach and he’s one of the hardest working guys you’ll ever be around,” O’Shea said. “He deserves to have that opportunity to have that conversation, for sure, and to come back. Once again, that requires more study and more conversation and some certainty.”
–On whether the organization did enough in the offseason to take another shot at the Grey Cup, especially with the game in Winnipeg:
“Wade never says no. He’s always, ‘What do we need, what do we need, what do we need?’ We are bound by a cap.
Did you spend to it?
“That I don’t know but I’m sure we did come close. We generally do.”
Should the club have gone over the cap?
“That concept that you’re going to try harder because you’re hosting? That’s a fallacy. We’re always trying to win a Grey Cup. What’s different from one year to the next? What’s the same is a players’ cap and an operations cap, so we’re bound by those numbers.
“I’ve never doubted that. But we were trying to get to the Grey Cup in 2014. We were trying to get to the Grey Cup every single year. We managed it for a few years there and we didn’t on this one. It just so happens to be a home game, which is very disappointing for everybody. But I don’t think it was front-of-mind when you’re playing. I don’t think it was added pressure. What would we think if all of a sudden there was 10 times more resources in one year than there was in the previous 10 or 11? Its a cap league.”
On changes for 2026 and balancing loyalty vs. the need for roster improvement:
“There’s always change. Every team is different. We say the same thing every single year in training camp: it’s a new team and they have to figure it out with new people and a new plan. It’s always different. Do I believe in wholesale change? Never. What’s led us to this point is continuity, so I’ll never believe in wholesale change. But it’s pro sport and there’s always some. For what we believe in and what we’ve witnessed, the less the better.
“That doesn’t change from 2019, from 2014, from 2025. Just because we’re out of the playoffs in the first round compared to going to a Grey Cup, that doesn’t change. It’s always a balance. I mean, I love these guys but we still have to put together the best team we can and some of that will be out of our hands — some guys will choose to go in a different direction, some of it will be our decision. But you have to put some good work in in this offseason and figure out what your roster can look like and where you need to get better and where you’re good and how you can fill positions of need if you think you have them.
“It’s a longer process, for sure. The balancing? It’s pro sport. The point would always be you’ve got to consider the human. These decisions would be harder on any player. But we’ve got a lot of good players. A lot of good players.”
