A smorgasbord on the first Sunday in autumn…
And, so, the serious heave-ho of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ crusade is about to commence, and not much of what transpired on Friday night is apt to convince many among the rabble that their football heroes are up for the task.
More to the point, the fourth-quarter iffiness of the Bombers’ 31-14 victory over the inept Montreal Alouettes at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry perhaps confirms that this will not be the year the local lads win the final three-down game in November for the first time since Bill Norrie wore the chain of office at City Hall in Good Ol’ Hometown.
I mean, these were the now 3-10 Alouettes with their now 0-3, all hat-no cattle quarterback and his unearned sense of entitlement.
The Als are Charlie Brown in shoulder pads. Their night normally ends with an oomph and a thud as Lucy yanks the ball away yet again. Three months ago, the Bombers whupped the lowly Larks by 46 points. With a QB as green as St. Patty’s Day. So defeat at the mitts of these Sad Sacks was not an option Friday. Yet the end result remained in question until Marcus Sayles plucked an ill-thrown Johnny Manziel pass a minute and 57 ticks from time, thus halting a four-game skid that had taken Winnipeg FC to the bottom of the Canadian Football League’s West Division mosh pit.
The Bombers remain there today, because the B.C. Lions are proving to be an unco-operative bunch, even as they function without their starting quarterback. (The Leos found a rabbit in a hat on Saturday night, beating the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in overtime and, at 6-6, have played one game less than 6-7 Winnipeg.)
The sketchiness of the Bombers’ latest skirmish is unnerving if you count yourself among the faithful who do not wear rose-tinted glasses. That is, Winnipeg FC was tooth-and-toenail to best the lowly Larks, so what horrors await them with the Edmonton Eskimos (twice), Calgary Stampeders, Saskatchewan Roughriders and Bytown RedBlacks lying in wait to close out the crusade?
As I said at the top, the serious heave-ho is at hand, and the Bombers will require better play and coaching if they’re to wrestle third place or a crossover playoff spot from the Lions or Eskimos.
Buckle up, kids.
Okay, that was the jar-half-full take on the events of Friday night. The positive? Matt Nichols won’t be entering a witness protection program this week. The Bombers starting quarterback played a mistake-free, boo-free game. When I say mistake-free, I mean major gaffes that go the other way for six points. None of us knows where Nichols’ head has been the past few weeks, but I’m guessing he could see his pancreas from there. Nothing but brain farts. He kept his wits about him vs. les Larks, though, and that ought to silence the blah, blah, blah and yadda, yadda, yadda about changing QBs for a few days.
TSN’s favorite lousy quarterback, J. Manziel, wasn’t awful vs. the Bombers. He was Johnny Meh-ziel. Fact is, he’s done nothing extraordinary in his three starts, unless you consider four interceptions in one half special. He has yet to win a game. He has yet to hurl a touchdown pass. He has yet to score a TD. Still, Glen Suitor and others at TSN talk as if he’s turned the water he walks on into wine. Manziel’s apologists are swift to point accusing fingers at the Larks woeful offensive line and receivers who couldn’t catch a cold standing naked in a meat cooler. Well, if Johnny Meh is as mobile as they say, he wouldn’t have been sacked five times Friday (a sixth was overturned by penalty), and every QB in the CFL has pass-catchers who drop the football. Fact is, Antonio Pipkin had better numbers than Manziel in three of his four starts.
Just wondering: Did Suitor ask Manziel for a date after the game? Seriously. It’s quite clear that Suitor has replaced Kate Beirness as the No. 1 groupie in TSN’s Cult of Johnny, and his game-long gushing about the Als quarterback was totally teeny-bopper stuff. And kind of creepy. Early in the skirmish, after Johnny Meh had scrambled for a first down, Suitor gasped, “There’s the magic!” It was as if Johnny Rotten was the first QB to ever escape a pass rush. Suitor also made an asinine comparison between Manziel and Doug Flutie. I don’t know if Suitor reviews his work, but he should be embarrassed by his celebrity-crush natterings on Friday.
I keep hearing that Manziel sells tickets. Ya, and I’ll be selling acorns to squirrels this month. The Bombers and Als performed in front of the smallest audience of 2018 at Football Follies Field, with only 24,349 in the pews. Compare that to the 25,931 head count when the Johnny Rotten-less Als visited last season, and it’s a dip of 1,582 customers. Mind you, the Bombers aren’t much of a sell this year. Through seven home dates, the body count is down 6,981.
I’m sorry, but every time I see a guy wearing a Manziel jersey, I see someone who supports a man who beat up a woman. And when I see a woman with that guy, I wonder about her. Like, why would she keep company with someone who supports a man who beat up a woman? Seems to me that would be a deal breaker. Just saying.
Terry Jones of Postmedia Edmonton will be a marshal for this year’s Grey Cup parade in E-Town. I’ve often wondered what a parade marshal does. Other than sit in a car and wave, that is. Whatever his duties, I’m sure Large will be a boffo parade marshal.
Well, this is interesting: Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman talks to local news snoops on the record about as often as it snows in August, yet he found time for a recent chin-wag with Calgary scribe Eric Francis. Nothing the Winnipeg Jets co-bankroll told Francis was enlightening, but the fact he granted an out-of-towner an audience says something. I don’t know if it says Chipman has a low regard for jock journos in River City, or if they’d rather not talk to him, but I strongly suspect it’s the former.
So now we know why the Winnipeg Free Press dumped Scott Campbell as its freelance columnist on all things Jets—to make room for Andrew Berkshire. And that means advanced stats, charts and graphics up the ying-yang. Spare me. I mean, my eyes glaze over when I attempt to read a Murat Ates offering in The Athletic. He crunches more numbers than a nerdy kid with a slide rule. So, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll pass on Berkshire in the Drab Slab. I don’t want to make my brain hurt and my eyes bleed any more than necessary. But I wish him well.
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: Max (Son of Cement Head) Domi of the Montreal Canadiens shakes the hockey glove off his right hand, he forms a fist with that hand, he punches Florida Panthers defender Aaron Ekblad flush on the nose, then says, “By no means did I want to hurt him. Obviously, I was not trying to hurt him.” In whose universe are you not trying to wound someone when you punch him in the beak? Talk about a slab of concrete not falling far from the cement mixer.
The National Hockey League suspended Domi for the remainder of the Habs pre-season exercises. Is that supposed to be punishment or a reward?
If Domi acting like a cement head doesn’t take the prize for stupidity, surely Nick Kypeos’s take on the incident does. Speaking on 590 The Fan in the Republic of Tranna, Tyrannosaurus Kipper basically blamed the victim, saying Ekblad chose “not to protect himself.” Wrong. Ekblad chose not to fight. Someone at Sportsnet ought to inform Kypreos that it’s safe to leave the 1970s behind.
There’s only one way to describe the new look on the Sportsnet website: Dog’s breakfast.
Well, I now have a reason to once again root, root, root for the Los Angeles Dodgers: Billie Jean King and longtime partner Ilana Kloss have become minority owners. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s now three lesbians in the owners suite of Major League Baseball, the other being Laura Ricketts of the Chicago Cubs.
And, finally, Tiger Woods won a golf tournament Sunday afternoon. Who knew that to be possible? Not me.
The River City Renegade 
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