A year ago, for sure. It was the trash-talking, hard-hitting Blue Bombers that spawned the nickname, but it was The Peg in general that seemed to be one happening place when it came to pro sports in Canada.
The Bombers were an aggressive group en route to the Grey Cup, a plush new football playpen for the 2012 season was being built for them on the grounds of the University of Manitoba and the NHL Jets were back, or at least the Atlanta Thrashers had been moved north to become Jets 2.0.
Winnipeg was on the move. Back in business, baby!
A year later, well, not so much. The Jets are in a lockout and Evander Kane’s next game will be in Minsk. The football stadium, an innovative 33,000-seat design below grade with a roof over 85 per cent of the seats, didn’t get built on schedule and is still under construction. Otherwise, The Boss might have stopped by for a couple of nights.
Those delays also put the Bombers on the road for four games to start the season and they lost all four. At rickety and dented old Canad Inns Stadium, the Bombers have been decent in splitting six games, but overall the 3-9 record is a gigantic disappointment and cost head coach Paul LaPolice his job weeks ago.
Swaggerville Lost, as it were.
But the CFL is a most forgiving place to live, history tells us. A Winnipeg win over Hamilton last week, the same week perennially bruised quarterback Buck Pierce returned to work, has the Bombers feeling like their season may be turning around.
On Saturday, this time it will be the visiting Argonauts who won’t have their starting quarterback in Ricky Ray, a change of script the Bombers can get behind.
“This week we have a lot more confidence,” said head coach Tim Burke, who took over from LaPolice. “They are finding we can be the team we thought we could be.”
Now the Argos can tell you from experience that beating up on wildly inconsistent Hamilton can make you think you’re better than you are. Scott Milanovich’s crew thumped the Tabbies in consecutive games in the first week of September and hasn’t won since.
But Pierce makes this a different Winnipeg team, while 35-year-old Jarious Jackson will be making his first start in two years under centre for the Argos, an equation that could make Saturday evening’s collision in surprisingly balmy conditions (26 C at game time) more intriguing than the records of the two teams would suggest.
Pierce said it’s “no secret” that the Bombers haven’t played well this season against teams like the Argos that lean on their receivers and play a lot of man-to-man coverage, one reason why the Winnipeg squad isn’t doing a lot of math work on what it might take to make the CFL post-season.
“We have to focus on Toronto. We can’t multi-task on this job,” he said with a smile. “We’ve put ourselves in a difficult enough situation as it is.”
Burke said the Bombers had their best week of practices of the entire season, while Milanovich said Jackson and the offence had an “excellent” day on Thursday after struggling earlier in the week.
The Argo coach said there’s nothing in the playbook that wasn’t there in training camp, so Jackson should be familiar with everything he’s asked to do, and said the reps he got last week in Montreal after Ray went down with a knee problem should be a big help.
Toronto would love to think their December-December quarterback duo (Ray turns 33 next month) can have a Sonny Jurgenson-Billy Kilmer impact on their season. Pretty much everyone on both teams believes Jackson will be much more aggressive throwing deep than Ray would be, giving the Argos a different look.
“(Jackson) needs to make some big plays, but he’s got to be efficient with the other stuff too so we can move the sticks,” said Milanovich.
Jackson has won three of his four career starts against Winnipeg. Now the former Golden Domer is still as confident but without recent triumphs to buttress his belief in himself.
“In the back of my mind I know I’ve had success here before,” said Jackson, who threw for 340 yards in a one-sided Lions win here in ’08. “Hopefully I can go out and duplicate that or something close to it.”
The Bombers are planning something very different, of course. A week ago for the Tiger-Cat game, it was a chilly 7 C at the old stadium with 80 km/h winds. Saturday night it’s expected to be shirtsleeves at halftime at the Appleton’s Rum Shack.
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