Year in Review #4 | Inconsistency/Frustration

It was late June and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers had just finished dismantling the Edmonton Elks 36-23 on Princess Auto Stadium home soil.

The club was a perfect 3-0 to start the season, including back-to-back wins over the B.C. Lions in their first two contests. And in that moment it was reasonable to assume everything was once again right in Bomberland despite the offseason roster changes and new faces on the coaching staff.

It’s what happened next — not just in the following game but in the weeks which followed — which ultimately told the tale of the 2025 Blue Bombers and comes in as the #4 story in our annual Top 5 Year in Review series.

That spotless 3-0 start was followed by a pair of 21-point losses to the Calgary Stampeders and then a two-TD defeat in Toronto and just like that the 3-0 start became 3-3.

We were teased by a 3-1 mid-summer run had the club back to 6-4 heading into the Labour Day Classic and the annual showdown with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. The scenario then? A sweep of the Riders — 8-2 at the time, just ahead of the 7-3 Stamps — would have launched the Blue Bombers right back in the fight for first or second in the West Division.

Instead…

Another tumble came with back-to-back losses to the Riders followed by a defeat in Hamilton to drop Winnipeg to 6-7. Then came two straight Ws — including a 40-3 mauling of the Tiger-Cats — which again raised hopes another late season run would lead to more playoff magic.

Blue Bombers fans know how this turned out. The 10-8 record in an uber-competitive West Division meant a fourth-place finish and, for the first time in franchise history, a spot in the playoffs as a crossover team to face the Montreal Alouettes in the Eastern Semi-Final.

That game in itself was a microcosm of the entire year, what with Winnipeg being thoroughly out-classed in falling behind 25-6 at halftime, quickly rallying to then take a 27-25 loss before being rolled over when it really mattered in a 42-33 loss that saw the club surrender 556 yards and turn the ball over three times as the Als dominated the time of possession by having the ball for 13 minutes and 18 seconds more than the visitors.

It was, essentially, a final rinse and repeat of the entire season, one in which the Blue Bombers were a sub-par 7-9 in their final 16 games after the impressive 3-0 start.

“That East semifinal was a great representation of our year,” said defensive back Redha Kramdi just last week in a media conference call after his contract extension was announced. “So, we came out, s–t the bed, and then came back. And then lose a tight game. After the first half, no one thought we could come back again, and we did. Because we have a great team. But we couldn’t keep that lead. So that’s how I feel about the season.

“We just need to find back that consistency. It’s all small stuff. It’s nothing major. It’s all small assignment issues. That’s what football is. But that game, us digging our own grave, and then climbing back from the dead, losing a tight game, it’s a good representation of how I think the season went on.

“A lot of ups and downs and no real consistency. We just need to get back on track and find that consistency again.”

Another telling number about the current state of this organization, one which appeared in six straight West Division Finals from 2018-24 and made five consecutive trips to the Grey Cup from 2019-24, winning two championships:

Winnipeg was 40-10 in the regular season from 2021-24, but just 21-15 over the last two years.

“We were 10-8 and not good enough,” said Mike O’Shea at the end of the season. “Made the playoffs and we were not good enough. Expectations are extremely high, and we shouldn’t lower them. So, we’ve got to get back to playing a little better football and get back to advancing through the playoffs.”

Added GM Kyle Walters:

“The big one is the number of quality wins we had. We you look at it — 10-win season and making the playoffs is OK. But the thing that jumps out for me is we didn’t beat a Trevor Harris-led team (Saskatchewan). We didn’t beat (Calgary) when Vernon (Adams, Jr.) played. Davis Alexander (Montreal), we didn’t beat.

“You look at the good quality wins — early in the year when we beat B.C. and Nathan (Rourke) was playing and when Bo (Levi Mitchell) came out here and we beat a Hamilton team. We had two good wins, but it was just too inconsistent, even on some of those other wins when it was, ‘OK, we snuck those ones out.’ You could tell it was we were grinding and we were fighting, and we were working but it just wasn’t the sustained level of quality play throughout the year. That was obvious for everybody.”

Interestingly, for all the heat the Blue Bombers offensive group took this past season, their offensive point total per game dipped only marginally to 23.1 from was 23.2 in 2024.

That said, just a couple of years ago Winnipeg finished second in the CFL in yards passing per game at 292.4 and that number has since fallen to 260.2 in 2024 (8th overall) to dead last in 2025 at 235.0.

“It felt different,” said star running back Brady Oliveira at the end of the season. “It didn’t feel like we scored the same amount of points last compared to this season. It felt different.

“The thought that comes to my mind is that Hamilton game (a 40-3 win that featured 514 yards net offence). We looked like that Bomber offence. But I just don’t think that we had many of those games this year.

“We had lots of tight games, gritty wins, gritty performances. We kept them close. But of course, as an offence you want to go out there and you want to be dominant. You want to go out there and score points and help your team win games. We didn’t do enough of that this year.”

The critical next step for this franchise is to ensure 2026 is a retool, not a rebuild. That’s the expectation in these parts now with nine straight double-digit win seasons. Another inconsistent season like ’25 won’t sell in these parts.

“Expectations are a great thing,” said quarterback Zach Collaros. “Having high expectations are a great thing and you should have high expectations of yourself, and we should have high expectations of our organization. It’s why people want to come play here. It’s why those of us who have been here six-plus years, five-plus years want to come back and keep doing this, because of the expectations.

“If it was just to make the playoffs each year or maybe make the playoffs each year a lot of us would have just retired by now. But that chase is why a lot of us continue to want to do this. It’s because of the expectation, the standard that’s been set here.”

Next: Two for Trey