Blue Bombers receiver Gavin Cobb in Thursday's loss to the Edmonton Elks; photos by Cameron Bartlett
There’s a temptation for so many right now in the immediate aftermath of the second loss in three games for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to start making blanket statements and black and white evaluations.
It’s fair, too, because their 1-2 start — the latest performance Thursday’s sloppy 23-18 loss to the Edmonton Elks — has certainly featured a gazillion warts and blemishes to have many averting their eyes.
My take, for what it’s worth: it’s still June and we’re just one-sixth through the Canadian Football League season. And from this vantage point the Blue Bombers are like a batch of wet cement still in need of some gravel before the mixing finishes and the settling begins.
The caveat to that: the CFL’s West Division is going to be a battle royale through the entire schedule and falling to 1-2 in what should be an uber-tight conference is like falling on your face out of the starting blocks in a middle-distance race.
Ultimately, there’s still time to make up ground, but being in chase position early can be dangerous — both in the here and now and long term.
“We can’t just lay off the first quarter and start slow, have a second quarter, great third quarter and great fourth quarter before that last drive when we let them walk down and score. That’s bad,” said defensive back Redha Kramdi of the Blue Bombers falling behind 17-0, rallying to take an 18-17 lead before giving up the game-winning score inside the final minute.
“It was there for us to take. We let down in the last drive. It didn’t cost us in Calgary (in the season opener, when Winnipeg rallied from a late score with a game-winning Sergio Castillo field goal with no time left), but it did here.
“Look, I love the way we played in the third quarter and the fourth — until that last drive. I’m pretty proud of the boys for fighting back. But that last drive… we need to be better. We need to show up and finish the game.
“It will be good. It will,” Kramdi added. “I really hate losing, but we’ve got hard working people and great talent in here. It’s Game 3. It’s a loss, but it will be good.”
That’s a tougher sell today than it was prior to the Elks loss, but with all the negative Thursday night there were just enough good moments to believe this wet cement can still be the foundation of something solid.
“(The Elks) are a good team,” said Blue Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea. “But these guys are pros. They understand what they’re capable of based on what they did in the second half and they’re not going to look at that and say, ‘Oh, we should build off the second half; that was really good.’ They’re going to look at it from the lens of, if we did that in the first half this is a different story… or possibly a different story.
“They’re going to see the mistakes they made early and they’re not going to be pleased. They’re pros that way.”
ICYMI, here is our Game Recap from Thursday night:
And what follows is this week’s edition of UPON FURTHER REVIEW…
THREE NUMBERS WHICH JUMPED OUT AFTER… a second glance at the stats package, which can be found here:
1 Just to recap some of the ugly from Thursday night, the Blue Bombers had six fumbles and lost three, had two missed field goals, allowed three sacks while getting none, fell behind 17-0 and then rallied and gave up 106 yards rushing to Justin Rankin — the third game in a row a rival running back has hit the century mark — and still almost won.
The number that is the most glaring? The turnovers, absolutely.
Brady Oliveira dives to score his touchdown on a fourth-quarter pass from Zach Collaros
“When you have turnover problems that’s the type of result you’re going to get,” said veteran receiver Nic Demski, who led the club with six catches for 92 yards. “We’ve got to do a better job and that’s the main thing. We preach ball security and we didn’t take care of the ball like we wanted to and that’s everybody on this offence. We’ve got to get better.”
To that end, when O’Shea was asked after the game about ball security being one of the team’s strengths over the last few years, he said: “I don’t think it was last year (they were -11 in the turnover differential, second worst in the CFL to Ottawa’s -16).
“We have to be better. We have to coach it differently and look at it differently and we need to be better than that.”
2 One more on the offence because it truly was a messy, inconsistent performance. Winnipeg managed 369 yards of net offence, including 290 passing yards by Zach Collaros and 106 along the ground, led by Brady Oliveira’s 77 yards on 13 carries.
But their overall drive chart is telling. in the first half — before their last possession which ended with a Collaros to Tim White TD with four seconds left — Winnipeg’s first five possessions featured two missed field goals, two fumbles and a punt.
A late drive was also frustrating after the club took an 18-17 lead. The Blue Bombers got the ball back with 5:02 remaining and got four yards from Oliveira on first down. But they couldn’t convert a second-and-six and punted after a two-and-out that gave the Elks 3:29 left to mount their comeback.
Edmonton then marched 57 yards on 10 plays, took 2:50 off the clock and capped it with a Cody Fajardo to T.J. Luther TD.
Winnipeg then moved from their own 48-yard line to the Edmonton 39 with 10 seconds left but a pass and catch to Demski was stopped at the Elks’ 11-yard line to end the game.
Zach Collaros completed 24-of-33 for 290 yards and two TDs in the loss to Edmonton
“We take pride in never giving up and never being out of a game,” said Demski of the rally from 17-down. “In the CFL you just never know what’s going to happen in the last three minutes. I really believe if we had six more, seven more seconds — one more play — we definitely could have won that game. We could have won that game either way.
“That’s the beauty of football — it’s a game of inches, a game of seconds, a game of minutes. We’ve just got to do a better job of taking care of the football as an offence and put our team in a better position to win.
“We’ve got a lot of veterans on this team, but we’ve also got some new guys and some guys that are meshing in,” added Demski. “We’ve just got to be better as a collective. I don’t think you can point the finger at one unit. We’re a family on this football team and we all know that we’ve got to come together and play three-unit football if we want to win these games. ”
3 A couple of Justin Rankin-related numbers here: first, he rushed 11 times for 95 yards in the first half. but was then held to just 11 yards on four carries — and a fumble — in the second half.
Second, Rankin has now faced the Blue Bombers five times since coming into the league in 2024 and has authored four 100-yard rushing games in those meetings. His totals against Winnipeg: 68 carries for 540 yards, for a gaudy 7.94-yard average.
Redha Kramdi (6) and teammates rally to take down Justin Rankin
“My honest opinion? Rankin is probably the best player I’ve played against, probably the best player in the CFL if you take out the quarterbacks. He’s amazing,” said Kramdi. “He can do everything to impact the game. He’s hard to tackle in space, can catch the ball, can run it inside or outside… he can do everything. It’s crazy.
“We got punched in the face in the first quarter. But holding him when they have the lead and want to lean on him to not even 20 yards after that horrible first quarter — it’s good to see the positive in that. It’s a sh—y situation. We lost. But that’s hopeful. We can do it. We can piece it up and do it for four quarters.”
FOR THOSE WHO ROCKED, WE SALUTE YOU... another sellout at Princess Auto Stadium Thursday night, pushing the club record consecutive sellout streak to 16. There were, understandably, some boo birds when the home side fell behind 17-zip in the first half, but the building was raucous later and played a huge part in Edmonton’s time-count penalty in the fourth quarter.
“The fans did a great job,” said O’Shea. “They stuck with us and they helped create two time-count penalties (the other one in the first quarter) and they were right in it until the end. Loved it. They were loud and excellent.
“Obviously we want to be better than that. We understand the value of our fan base. Even the young guys, to a man, understand how important it is to win and to win at home and play with a sense of pride. Slow start, but it’s not like they’re not running and not trying.”
AND FINALLY… for those of you who have read this far, thank you. And for those who missed the game or want to relive all the highs and lows, check out the condensed game here:
