The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have fired head coach Doug Berry. And they did it despite the fact he was in the first year of a new three-year deal. Good for Bomber CEO Lyle Bauer.
Berry has been the Bombers head coach since 2006 and while the team has reached the post-season in all three years, they simply aren’t getting better. They have an offence that struggles and they aren’t fun to watch.
After finishing 8-10 this season and after losing the Eastern Conference Semifinal, 29-21, at home to Edmonton, there was nothing else Bauer could do. Berry had to go.
So who could possibly be surprised? The fact is, Since training camp, this day was inevitable.
that’s because a week into training camp, Berry cut Troy Westwood for no good reason — and with no legitimate replacement — and that was the end. Nothing good was going to come of that decision because it was purely personal and not in any way professional.
Remember, this was a club had brought in nine kickers and four punters over the previous two seasons in an effort to find a replacement for Westwood and yet the weightlifter, ex-pro boxer and still successful singer and songwriter, had beaten out every one of them to keep his job.
Still, Berry said early in camp that since last year’s Grey Cup, he thought Westwood had lost some leg strength. That comment planted the seed that eventually started a daily circus involving the kickers and ultimately led to a decision to dump Westwood and go with an unproven import named Alexis Serna. Serna was awful — he could barely punt, especially in a wind, and was a marginal field-goal kicker.
However, Serna wasn’t Westwood and that was all that mattered to Berry.
Sadly, Berry tried to mask his decision by coming up with legitimate reasons for Westwood’s dismissal, but not a word passed the sniff test. Shortly after Berry talked nicely about his relationship with Westwood, the 41-year-old kicker went off.
“Just because words are spoken doesn’t mean they are truthful or from the heart,” Westwood said. “Last year I lost my job. When I got it back, I averaged 48.6 yards in 39 punts and went eight-for-nine in field goals down the stretch to the Grey Cup.
“I can’t say that I’m surprised with what’s happened, but I don’t feel I was beaten out for this spot. I feel really good about my punting. There was no doubt that I was the best punter in camp.”
From that day forward, Berry’s fate was sealed. He had lost his locker room before the season started and as the campaign progressed, the situation got worse, not better.
After the team fell to 0-3 early back in July, everything publicly unravelled. I wrote the following in the National Post…
It started with kind of an innocuous comment a week ago, after return-man Fred Reid, ran a punt out of the end zone that was probably best left as a single point.
Head coach Doug Berry said, “Reid has the green light to do whatever he wants on returns,” but his teammates said in that situation, Reid looks to the sidelines to get a wave from the coaches. The wave was clear, Reid saw it and ran the ball out to the four-yard-line. Eventually, a safety was conceded and the Argos got good field position on the ensuing kick. This past week, Berry was looking at different returners and some of Reid’s teammates got all grumbly.
Then, last Monday, Berry dumped all over his long-snapper, Chris Cvetkovic because Berry’s hand-selected kicker/punter, Alexis Serna, dropped his second snap in two weeks – and both times it cost the Bombers a touchdown.
Berry however, told the local scribes that Cvetkovic was hired “to do one job,” and he has to “get it right.” The snap should be “between the waist and the shoulders,” and then let Serna off the hook.
Some veterans were displeased. Last year, when Cvetkovic was hurt, the Bombers struggled to replace him. In the end, they didn’t. It’s one of the toughest jobs in football and Cvetkovic’s “bad snap” was actually helmet-high to a kicker who is smaller than a Hobbit. Serna simply dropped the ball – for the second week in a row – and we now have the Curse of Troy Westwood.
Berry is a newspaper person’s delight. He’ll say all sorts of things. Mostly, he’ll just randomly – and publicly — dump on his players and obviously people with tape recorders love that. When the team is winning, most players just laugh at that stuff, but when a good team is 0-2 – now 0-3 — that kind of talk makes for a nasty atmosphere in the locker room.
After last Friday night’s humiliating loss, Berry went off again, saying he’s not sure he has 42 guys who are “willing to compete, willing to play hard, willing to be the best.”
He might be right about that. One wonders, however, if he knows the reason why.
By that point, I knew Berry had to get this team to the Grey Cup or his job was toast. However, little did any of us realize that at mid-season, GM Brendan Taman would re-build a 2-8 football team and make them a 6-2 force down the stretch.
However, as good as they’d become, they were beaten quite badly by the Eskimos in the Eastern semifinal as the Bombers offence struggled mightily. That was it. You knew Berry was done.
So on Wednesday, CEO Lyle Bauer pulled the plug. It was the right thing to do at the right time. the Bombers have a pretty solid core of players. Now the right coach can take them to where they should be.