You have to hand it to Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly. His team was dreadful on Friday night in a 19-5 loss to the Toronto Argonauts, but it could always have been worse.
After all, his defence and special teams were good to enough to win. However, his offence was so bad, well… no sense beating a dead horse. That was four days ago. Just check out our previous posts and it’s quite obvious how downright brutal his offensive unit has been.
This morning, however, as he talked about bringing in Michael Bishop as the team’s new No. 1 quarterback, Kelly still had enough personality to laugh a little.
“Man, if we’d pissed one drop of offence in those three losses, we’d be 4-0 now,” Kelly told Tom McGouran and I just before an on-air interview at 92-CITI-FM. “Just one drop.
“But we’ll get this thing right. I know we will. And Michael’s acquisition is the first step.”
You have to hand it to Kelly. He has now proven that his reign as head coach will NOT be Reinebold-esque. After all, when Jeff Reinebold’s Reign of Error was in its wildest throes of lunacy, ol’ Jeff wasn’t changing. He’d made a decision to go with T.J. Rubley and it was going to be T.J. Rubley until Jeff was fired.
And it was.
(Note: Reinebold, who had a tremendous personality and is still a person I like a lot, walked up to me at a Super Bowl five or six years later and the first thing out of his mouth was: “Scotty, T.J. Rubley, what was I thinking?” So he wasn’t completely insane.)
Kelly, meanwhile, has not gone the Reinebold route simply because he’s making a change just four games into his first season as head coach. Stefan Lefors was given every opportunity to succeed, he didn’t and Kelly understands that he has to do what he has to do. He still like Lefors, but he’s realized — as has everyone else — that the kid isn’t the answer. So he went out and got a veteran who, at least, gives the Bombers some hope.
“Michael is a great guy and he will fit in very well in the locker room,” Kelly said this morning. “And he should be ready to play quickly. When he was in Toronto and went through that outstanding 11-1 stretch with the Argos, the terminology and philosophy was the same.
“Charlie Carpenter, our line coach, was in Toronto at that time and it turns out that Michael didn’t have to make a big adjustment as we watched film on Sunday night. He knows the terminology and the way we run the offence. He also has the strongest arm in the CFL and that can’t hurt.”
Of course, if Bishop has all this upside, why wasn’t he working in the league?
“I was very much surprised he was out of work and available to us,” said Kelly who has conveniently ignored Bishop’s follies in Regina last year. “He has an exceptional arm and can make plays with his feet. He has the skill set to be a very successful quarterback in Winnipeg.”
In fairness to many of the Bomber players, the team played well on defence and on special teams during that offensive debacle on Friday night. And as Meatloaf said, “two out of three ain’t bad.”
“True,” said Kelly, “but we’ll be looking at the dashboard lights as we drive out of town if we don’t get the offence turned around.”
Good for him. Even in the darkest of times, a man has to keep his sense of humour.