It’s the holiday season, so our timing admittedly stinks. And, for that, we offer apologies all around before we proceed…
Yes, instead of bringing you tidings of comfort and joy on this day, we are here to open a fresh wound that may have just started to heal for some in Bomberland.
But duty calls, and the #2 entry in our annual Year in Review series on the top Winnipeg Blue Bombers stories looks back at the 41-24 loss to the Toronto Argonauts in the Grey Cup and the heartache that comes from the club’s third straight Grey Cup defeat.
And in some ways, given all the turbulence and ups and downs this squad both suffered through and enjoyed in ’24, what unfolded on Grey Cup Sunday in front of 52,349 fans at B.C. Place was an all-encompassing snapshot of the season.
After stumbling to an 0-4 start which became 2-6 before the end of July, the Blue Bombers then found their legs and sprinted to a first-place finish in the West Division with an 11-7 record after a 9-1 run to end the regular season.
That was then followed by a dominant 38-22 win over the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Western Final which had them as heavy favourites heading into the 111th Grey Cup after the Toronto Argonauts had lost starting quarterback Chad Kelly to a leg injury in the Eastern Final.
Still, not long after the ball was put on the tee for the championship game the Blue Bombers began serving up one mistake after another against the Argos and ultimately unravelled in the fourth quarter of what was then a one-point contest, with Toronto leading 17-16.
“We didn’t give ourselves a chance to be able to play this game today,” safety Brandon Alexander told bluebombers.com inside a morose Blue Bombers locker room afterward. “We deserved to get that ass-whupping today. We got our ass whupped and well deserved by them.
“We took penalties when we didn’t need to take penalties. We had a couple turnovers at poor times and when we got out there as a defence, we didn’t stop them when we needed to. That’s the best way to put it without sounding much more harsh: we really deserved that ass-whupping today.
“To be real, this one is going to hurt for sure. But with how we played, I’m not surprised. I don’t know how to put how much it hurts into words.”
The game changed on one play late in the third quarter when quarterback Zach Collaros injured the index finger on his throwing hand on a pass attempt after his hand hit the helmet of an opponent, with the digit needing stitches and a numbing agent.
When he returned, he clearly was having difficulty throwing, as he tossed three of his four interceptions after the injury and finished the day 15-of-30 for 202 yards.
“I don’t know if I took a helmet or if a hand hit it. It was a little bloody and I had to get some stitches in it and numb it,” said. “But that’s not an excuse for our performance tonight and I appreciate Osh (head coach Mike O’Shea) and the guys for letting me trying to gut it out there.
“It feels pretty bad every time (after a Grey Cup loss). There’s just so many people in the locker room that you care for, that you develop deep bonds with. We put in a lot of time, a lot of work together so to not have it go your way in the ultimate game is obviously tough. We’re going to take a deep breath and let this digest a little bit.”
The Blue Bombers turned the ball over five times, including the four picks and a Lucky Whitehead fumble on a punt return, as the Argos converted those mistakes into a whopping 27 points. Winnipeg led the game 10-3 at one point in the second quarter and was then out-scored 38-6 over a stretch before a late Brady Oliveira touchdown and two-point conversion in the final moments.
One of the biggest talking points as the game unfolded and will be a talking point into another long offseason was the decision not to lean more heavily on Oliveira — the 2024 Most Outstanding Player and Most Outstanding Canadian Player — especially after Collaros clearly wasn’t 100 percent.
Head coach Mike O’Shea noted the Argos had stacked the box near the line of scrimmage to effectively counter Oliveira and the club ran only a handful of plays in the third quarter — all factors that limited his touches.
Still, Oliveira had just 11 carries in the game — two on Winnipeg’s final possession and with the game out of reach — and rumbled for 84 yards.
“I’ve been trying to reflect on the game, and it still doesn’t make sense to me,” said Oliveira two days after the Grey Cup. “The only thing I can really touch on is the fact that I thought the offensive line and myself could have had more opportunity to take the game over. I don’t know why there wasn’t more opportunity.
“I still need to reflect on that and maybe have some conversations with my teammates, maybe some of the coaches and really get to understand — I think I’ve earned the right to understand why it played out that way. It’s just hard to reflect on it right now.”
And so, after back-to-back championships in 2019 and 2021, the Blue Bombers have now lost the last three title games — dropping a 24-23 decision to the Argos in 2022, a 28-24 defeat at the hands of the Montreal Alouettes in 2023 and now another setback to Toronto,
After this latest loss in Vancouver O’Shea was asked if given the team’s turnaround — going from 2-6 in July to the Grey Cup game — if the effort felt like a ‘wasted opportunity’ considering the way the team had played down the stretch.
“It might be a little early to think that way. I mean, it’s still pretty raw,” he said post-game. “Every time you don’t win your last game there’s a tendency to view it as failure. I don’t know about that. It was a helluva ride this year, quite a different season, and we just didn’t play our best ball at the end.”
One more from O’Shea, when asked if the latest loss stings worse than the previous two Grey Cup defeats — and his answer captured the sentiment of everyone in Bomberland:
“They all have their space to be terrible,” he said. “It’ll keep building and building to the point where it’s awful.”
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