Saturday night in Calgary, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers played a pretty decent football game in a 23-20 loss to the Stampeders.
It’s unlikely head coach Paul LaPolice and his staff are happy about it and you can pretty much bet the players are pissed at losing, but all things considered, a 23-20 loss to the best team in the West in their ball yard isn’t the end of the world.
OK, so the Bombers offence was marginal, but the guy playing quarterback, Steven Jyles, was simply a backup filling in for No. 1 Buck Pierce and when Pierce is ready to go, the Bombers should pick it up. In the end, Jyles was barely 50 per cent at 17-for-30 for 227 yards and two touchdowns, but 61 of those yards came on a single play when Jyles hit Terrence Edwards on long TD pass after Calgary’s Brandon Browner completely blew the coverage.
Granted, the Bombers had a chance to win it late in the fourth quarter, but from the Calgary 30, Jyles missed three straight receivers and that was it. When you consider that the Bombers offence as able to put up only 18 points (the final two points came on a time-wasting safety by the Stamps themselves just to blow the final seven seconds off the clock) while the defence played so well, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Winnipeg might have won that game with Pierce at the helm.
Defensively, the Bombers bent but didn’t break. At least, not too often. Calgary QB Henry Burris put together a terrific drive on the first series of the third quarter, but after moving the ball from deep in their own end to deep in the Bombers end, Philip Hunt forced a fumble and the Bombers made a game of it.
“I told the team I was proud of their effort,” LaPolice told reporters in Calgary after the game. “We put ourselves in a position to win the game, but unfortunately we didn’t make enough plays to win it. Hats off to them, they’re a good defensive unit.”
LaPolice is a decent man. I know football coaches and I know he was steaming underneath. The Bombers did have a chance to win and probably should have. However, aside from everything else, this effort did prove that when healthy, the Bombers are definitely capable of competing with any team in the league. Especially on the defensive side of the football.
The Bombers are now 2-3. Next week, they go into Hamilton, the site of that 28-7 loss in Week 3, in two weeks they get Hamilton back in Winnipeg on Aug. 13 (where the Bombers won 49-29 in Week 1) and in three weeks they go to Montreal where they’ll really be tested. Then it’s back-to-back with Saskatchewan. By Sept. 12, after their 10th game, we’ll know if this is a good Bomber team or just another also-ran.
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