The Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders proved beyond all doubt on Sunday afternoon that neither team has much of an offence. The Riders beat Winnipeg 19-6 in a dreadful football game at Mosaic Stadium, but give the Riders credit. At least all their receivers are on the DL. Winnipeg was just awful — and badly coached.
With the loss, the Bombers dropped to 2-7 on the season. Truly astounding when one considers that earlier in the afternoon, the Bombers announced they had sold out the Canwest Banjo Bowl this coming Sunday afternoon at Canad Inns Stadium.
Gotta give Winnipeggers credit, they certainly embrace second- or even third-best.
In most cities, football fans would tell the operators of a lousy home team to shape up by refusing to buy tickets. When you’re 2-7 in most towns, you tell the team’s management you’ll come back when either they get their act together or they get themselves fired. Not in Winnipeg. Winnipeg fans are like Leafs fans. The more you disappoint us, the faster we buy tickets. In Winnipeg, drop to 2-7 and we’ll give you everything you want. If you’re the smiling proprietors, it’s sure a nice deal because it cuts down on any urgent need to fix the mess.
Sunday afternoon, the Bombers took everything they learned in last week’s 37-24 win over Hamilton and abandoned it. All of it. They stopped giving Charles Roberts the football and as a result, they had nothing else. The passing game was decent, not great, but decent, but without a running game, they couldn’t create a sustained offensive attack. Glenn went 28-for-42 for 269 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions (the final one IN the end zone), but Roberts carried the ball only 13 times for 48 yards and if he doesn’t see the ball 20 times a game, the Bombers have no chance. No chance at all. That’s just stupid.
When a team puts up only two field goals in the wide open CFL, that’s a bad team. When a team doesn’t use its most important weapon, the coach should get a pink slip. Even if you’ve decided to allow the quarterback to call his own plays, you could still remind him every now and again that No. 1 is in the lineup.
Meanwhile, Saskatchewan wasn’t very good on offence, either. Michael Bishop, in his first game with the Riders, was a downright rotten 10-for-24 for 107 yards, no touchdowns and one interception. That’s just horrid. Without the two Glenn interceptions along with fumbles by Charles Roberts and Kevin Glenn, Saskatchewan would have been lucky to score enough points to win.
Winnipeg notched a field goal in the first quarter and another in the fourth quarter and that was it. In the world of real professional football, Roberts would have been given the ball on nearly every play. That’s because Roberts went into the game needing 61 yards to reach the 10,000-yard plateau. In Winnipeg, the coaches don’t care about such nonsense. In Winnipeg, losing big and losing ugly is more important than, well, giving the ball to the greatest runningback in franchise history and, ahh, winning.
OK, OK, I’m kidding. But this Winnipeg team couldn’t get Roberts enough touches to gain 61 yards. No wonder they’re looking at Timmy Chang, who failed miserably in Hamilton, as a fourth quarterback.
On the upside, with the CFL East as awful as it is, the 2-7 Bombers are still in the playoff hunt so no wonder they sold out the Banjo Bowl.
Or did they just sell 10,000 tickets in Regina?