I never thought of the Blue Bombers as an arrogant bunch.
Swashbucklers? Indeed. Swagger? For sure. (Just cop a glance at Willie Jefferson sometime.) But to the point whereby they don’t think their stuff stinks? Naw. That wouldn’t be the Winnipeg way, not with Mike O’Shea as the sideline steward.
Then again, maybe it’s become the Winnipeg way.
Perhaps they’ve become obnoxiously arrogant, like the Calgary Stampeders when they lorded over the western precinct of Rouge Football (7 first-place finishes in 11 seasons), and we just didn’t see it through our blue-and-gold goggles.
I mean, that possibility surely occurred to me while watching the Bombers cough up a hairball the size of Parliament Hill on Saturday afternoon in Bytown, where the large lads with the big W on their helmets were peacock strutting after building the 19-point advantage they carried, and squandered, in the fourth quarter.
The vibe I got from my flatscreen suggested the Bombers were doing the home-standing RedBlacks a favor by sharing oxygen with them. They looked every bit the neighborhood bully, cock-of-the-walking and looking for lunch money to swipe.
Alas, as they did vs. the B.C. Leos last month, the Bombers instead became every bit the false bill of goods, although the script in their 31-28 OT loss to the RedBlacks was different. Whereas the Leos pummeled the Winnipegs from the opening smash-mouth, it wasn’t until the final quarter and OT that the Bombers morphed into a slapstick, Keystone Kop-ish outfit vs. the RedBlacks. It was 15-plus minutes of truly gawdawful football.
“I don’t think our guys got complacent,” head coach O’Shea assured Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun.
I suppose we can take Coach Grunge’s word for it, because he ought to know. But that’s not how it looked. I mean, Dalton Schoen ho-humming what should have been a routine home run catch? Adam Bighill and Brandon Alexander giving Bytown QB Dustin Crum a courtesy wave as he trundled to the end zone for the tying and winning touchdowns? Bighill and Alexander looked like two guys trying to catch a waiter’s attention.
These are all-star defenders. It was like Sinatra suddenly forgetting the lyrics to New York, New York. Or John Wayne forgetting how to sit a horse.
We can’t say this was a one-off, either. That’s what many of us thought about the B.C. horror show, but now it’s happened twice in the past four skirmishes, and maybe Milt Stegall wasn’t far off the mark when he suggested the Bombers were rapidly aging out as a championship group.
“The window will close on the foundation, the nucleus of this team, after this year,” Milt said on TSN’s pigskin panel in advance of the opening thrust of this Canadian Football League crusade. “I say that because Father Time is undefeated. Adam Bighill 34, Stanley Bryant 37, Zach Collaros 34, Jackson Jeffcoat 32, Willie Jefferson 32, Mike Miller 34, Patrick Neufeld 34, Jermarcus Hardrick 33…all those guys will not be back next year. They can’t stand pat. I don’t care if they go 18-and-oh and win the Grey Cup, they will start making changes, so those guys need to understand this is the final run for the nucleus, for the majority of the nucleus, for this team.”
I mocked Milt for that take (d’oh!), but that’s a whack of thirtysomethings in the trenches, and football people keep telling us that’s where most games are won and lost.
The thing is, I’m not buying the age thing lock, stock and yellow birth certificate.
I don’t have feet on the ground in Good Ol’ Hometown, so I can only speculate based on what I see on my flatscreen, and I think the Bombers have grown too big for their football britches.
They didn’t forgot how to run, tackle, throw, catch and kick vs. the RedBlacks. They thought they could just chuck their pads onto the grass at TD Place in Bytown and the home side would bow and genuflect.
No doubt to a man they’d pooh-pooh that notion as a load of hooey, but I haven’t heard a better explanation for their epic face plant.
The River City Renegade 
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