Matt Nichols has seen too much, and been through too much, to let his last game linger.
And even if the Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterbacks coach had occasion to do a tumble down into a well of depression, Buck Pierce – his position coach and a man who had a few tough days at the office during his playing days, too – had a novel approach for helping him forget last Saturday’s loss to the B.C. Lions.
“It was one of the harder ones to flush,” said Nichols after practice on Tuesday. “But after we watched the film, we had our grade sheets and Buck took mine from me, ripped it up and said, ‘This is over with.’ And from that moment we were done with it and are moving on to this one.
“You have no time to feel sorry for yourself in this business. Professional football is a complete rollercoaster. You can never get too high or too low. You move on to the next week and it’s going to be a tough one every week. We’ve got to give all of our attention to this team and make sure we’re doing more than what we think is necessary to make sure we’re prepared to go out and play.”
The Bombers will wrap up a stretch that will see them play four of five on the road this Saturday afternoon in Toronto against the Argonauts. There is no time to wallow in misery from the club’s third defeat in five games and second via a last-second field goal.
Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea offered this when asked afterward what the predominant message was to his team today:
“Today? Move on. We’ve got to prepare for Toronto. As always, we focus way more about what we do. The coaches prepare a scouting report and a game plan based on what the opponent does. But when we’re out here practicing, when we’re watching film together as a team, when we’re talking football, we’re focused on what we do.
“We got back to that and focus on what we do, make sure we make the corrections that we looked at on film yesterday and get at it and start having fun again out there on the field.”
Nichols completed 17 of 28 passes for 214 yards against the Lions, but it’s the three interceptions that jump out from his stat line. After all, this is a guy who entered the season with a 46:17 touchdown-to-interception ratio over the last two years and has made ball security a cornerstone to his game since becoming the Bombers starter.
Consider this, though, as a counterpoint to what happened Saturday:
- Last season Nichols had three interceptions in the first two games and then threw just one over the next six contests.
- And he then had three interceptions over a two-game span in late August-early September before going on a run where he had just one mistake in his next eight games played.
“You know what? The sun is shining, the world didn’t end we’re back out here getting ready for another week,” Nichols said. “Excited for this one… (Toronto) is a tough defence. I mean they’ve got four or five all-star veteran guys in the defensive backfield. It’s going to be a test and we’re looking forward to see how it goes.
“I’ve played so much football. I’ve been through worse. You lose football games. Obviously, our record looks a lot better if we come away with that win. At the same time, I know we play a lot of West teams down the stretch. So, not by a long shot does one game make or break your season. I think it’s important to reflect on that and understand sometimes games like that are what teams need to light a fire under their butts a little bit and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“In a weird way, it might be a game we look back on towards the end of the season and say, ‘That was where it all turned around.’ We have one way of looking at it for us and that’s to move on and get better and forget about it.”
More on some of the news and notes on the Bombers first day back at work in this week’s installment of Need to Know…
Paul LaPolice won’t spend too much time second-guessing his play calls, but he has been re-living the club’s short yardage inadequacies from last Saturday. The Bombers were stuffed on a pair of possessions that cost the club a minimum of six points, likely more.
“I do kick myself that one of those two calls at the goal line should have given Andrew (Harris) an opportunity,” he said. “I could have done a better job there. And then at the end of the game we went with a wider wedge that we had seen on film that they didn’t handle well once. We had a change up to it… it didn’t work in our favour. We’ve got to get better and I’ll certainly get better at that.
“I talked to (Harris) yesterday and said, ‘You know what? I can give you one of those two carries, depending on where we are. One of them was at the three-yard line… at the three-yard line I should have gotten you one of those two touches.’
Asked if he might have been inclined to take the two field goals instead, he added:
“We had a second and two in the game where we had a play we wanted to do where we took a shot downfield and we hit it for a (long) gain,” said LaPolice. “If you don’t get that, people are saying, ‘Why aren’t you giving Andrew the ball on second and two?’ In hindsight, you can do all those things. That’s what we decided to do and whatever the coach decides we’ll go ahead and do. We’ve got to be better to win the football game. We weren’t good enough offensively to win the football game. We did a lot of good things, but we can’t turn the ball over like we did and make mistakes like we did.”
All that said, Mike O’Shea stressed after practice on Tuesday that the Bombers won’t change their approach to short-yardage. The club was 25 of 26 on quarterback sneaks last year and perfect through the first four games this season.
“(LaPolice) knows when it’s third and short that I want to go,” said O’Shea. “We told the O-line that for the last bunch of years – we want to go for it, we want to be in control of the ball and in control of the game as much as possible. We’ve got a lot of confidence in our short yardage package. I don’t want him to second guess calls. Let’s just put this one behind us and move forward.”
Here’s LaPolice, meanwhile, when asked to provide an assessment on the work of Nichols in the loss to B.C.:
“I told Matt, I thought he did a good job, he saw the field well and made good decisions on his check-downs, made good decisions on his deep balls, located the ball… the problem with a quarterback, just like the coach, is you can have 60 great plays, but if you have three mental errors that can be the difference in the game. Certainly, we’ve got to be better, we’ve got to protect the ball better and I’m sure he will.”
One more from LaPolice, on the errors opening the doors to being second-guessed:
“I get that. When a trick play doesn’t work it’s the worst thing in the world. When it works, it’s the best thing in the world. That’s the noise. We’re fine. We know what we’re doing.”
An injury to linebacker Frank Renaud has hit the Bombers Canadian depth and prompted the club to bring back defensive back Abu Conteh, a Winnipeg product. A third-round draft choice by the Bombers in 2017, Conteh played two games for the club last year before an injury and was cut earlier this season in training camp.
The list of walking wounded now includes Renaud, DE Trent Corney, OL Qadr Spooner, RB Kienan LaFrance, DB Derek Jones, DB Anthony Gaitor, LBy Shayne Gauthier and QB Alex Ross. Not practicing on Tuesday were CB Chris Randle, LB/DB Moe Leggett, and LB Chandler Fenner, while DB Brandon Alexander was back on the field. RB/SB Timothy Flanders was also back at work on Tuesday.
A lot of the post-game chatter around Bomber Nation was the lack of production for slotback Adarius Bowman, who finished the game with one catch for 25 yards. Bowman ranks sixth on the Bombers in receiving yardage with nine catches for 95 yards, behind Darvin Adams (245), Weston Dressler (202), Andrew Harris (142), Drew Wolitarsky (136) and Nic Demski (123).
“I’ve been doing this for so long, when it comes, it can turn into something else we’re talking about,” said Bowman. “Right now, I’m playing a role, trying to stay positive and just fit in and get to that win.
“I’ll tell you this much, when you do take a loss you start looking at all kinds of things. Being the guy that I am, I always want the ball. I’m never going to say no to that. But I do want a win. I love it over here. I love the environment, I like the group of guys, I love my coaches. I hate losing.
“I love being back in Winnipeg and when it starts rolling we’ll be talking about something else.”
The Bombers were nailed for a season-high nine penalties for 86 yards last Saturday. This after entering the game with just 24 penalties through the first four games – third-lowest in the league.
“Those come around every once in a while, even last year when we did as well as we did in terms of not taking penalties, there were a couple of games that just didn’t look like that,” said O’Shea. “The number of URs (unnecessary roughness infractions) was interesting… I don’t think that will happen again. I hope not. The timing of it was bad and everything sort of clumped together – three of them were in the second half, which is tough to take when you’re trying to win a game.
“These things happen. We’ve got to be tougher than that, mentally tougher than that, and not let it bother us and come back and make a play. It would be nice to see guys make plays after taking a penalty… and they do, generally.”
O’Shea also offered this, when asked if he was in correspondence with league about the infractions.
“I am every week. And it’s not just about our team,” he said. “I’ll try and watch every single game and I’ll certainly make a cut-up and talk about certain plays that have a bearing on what we do, too. If you’re responsible for throwing a challenge flag, you’d better have a good idea of how the games are being officiated around the league.”
The Bombers will be in Toronto this week to play at BMO Field, where the playing surface is natural grass, but one end zone and a chunk of the other is turf. It’s come under fire again this year as skill-position players have been slipping in the score zone.
“I’ve noticed it on film a ton,” said Matt Nichols. “It’s something you think about – what end zone are you going in to and making sure your receivers understand which side is the side you need to make sure you have sure footing in. For me, personally, if I’m spending time in the end zone usually it’s from the one-yard line plunging in. It’s not something I really have to deal with too much.
“People aren’t just making it up. You watch film and you see people slipping all over the place. For sure it’s an issue and it’s something we bring attention to with our guys.”
