Johany Jutras/CFL.ca
I can’t figure out how to best characterize Winnipeg’s 36-34 loss to the Calgary Stampeders. Was it a “moral victory” or a “gut punch” loss?
On the CFL on TSN pre-game show, Matt Dunigan was arguing about the validity of the “moral victory” saying it didn’t exist. In his world, success is defined by the final score, and I get that. At the end of every season, the team with the final ‘W’ is the champion, and by extension the best team in the league no matter what the circumstances were to get them there. However, there is another side to that argument.
Calgary is easily the best team this year and could easily challenge the 1989 Edmonton Eskimos for the greatest regular season record since the league expanded to 18 games. That Eskimos squad went 16-2 while this current Calgary team will finish off the year against five Eastern Division teams, none of which has a winning record. So a final record of 16-1-1 is very much in play (Quick aside: Can someone please post the 1989 Western Final on YouTube??? That Eskimos team scored almost 100 more points than the next best team and allowed 126 fewer points than the next best team. That’s just ridiculous. In that playoff game they would lose 32-21 to a 9-9 Saskatchewan Roughriders squad who would go on to win maybe the greatest Grey Cup of all time, 43-40 against Hamilton. I don’t ask for much but I need to see this game again).
Rene Paredes kicked the game-winning field goal for Calgary (Johany Jutras/CFL.ca)
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That said, can you not make the case this was a “moral victory” for Winnipeg considering the Bombers were leading 34-33 with fewer than 30 seconds left to play in Calgary? Of course, the fact that they got oh-so-close and still lost means this game is swaying into the worst type of loss out there: the “gut punch” loss. Instinctively, as a nutty, sometimes overly emotional sports fan, I will always choose watching my team getting blown out versus watching it let a season-defining win slip away at the end of regulation.
So this all goes back to the original question: How do you view Winnipeg’s loss? The obvious answer is also the most boring: it’s both. Every Blue Bombers fan must have been yelling at his or her TV (I’m 41, I have yet to cut the cord like so many millennials who consume sports on different “platforms,” so I still watch all my football on a television set) as Bo Levi Mitchell calmly moved his team 36 yards in two plays. That vitriol level must have gone up when Rene Parades did what he always does, kick 50-plus-yard game-winning field goals with no time on the clock.
A win would have shut up critics like myself, who have not been impressed with a team that ripped off seven straight wins. A victory would have ended the conversation that Winnipeg has yet to beat a team with a winning record. That narrative, by the way, is a suspect one when you consider that five of the nine teams have losing records and Calgary is the only team with a winning record that the Blue Bombers have faced (they will be tested soon with the Lions coming up for back to back games in Week 16 and Week 17 and than ending the season with two games against Ottawa).
If Parades had missed that kick, everyone would view Winnipeg differently. Suddenly, the Bombers would feel very much legitimate even by the most ardent critics. Now doesn’t that seem a bit unfair to have such a perception swing based on a kicker making a difficult field goal? The best argument you can make if you want to dismiss the effort by Winnipeg is the Bombers were down 24-0 with three minutes to go in the first half before Timothy Flanders bust up the middle for a hell of a 50-yard touchdown run. If you want to argue that Calgary simply eased up and allowed Winnipeg back in the game, you can find that argument. Yes, Calgary was the better team and its offensive line may have put up the best effort I’ve seen by a line all year, but with less than 30 seconds to go it sure felt like Winnipeg had pulled off a minor miracle.
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» Bombers on the way up despite loss
Matt Nichols and the Bombers had their seven-game winning streak snapped (Larry MacDougal/CFL.ca)
That’s why I can easily accept that loss as a “moral victory.” I know players don’t want to hear it, and I don’t blame them, but we may have learned more about Winnipeg in that loss than in many of their wins. This was not a game where the Bombers were five up in the turnover battle and held on to win. They made their fair share of mistakes; they didn’t quit when they found themselves down by 23 midway through the third quarter and in the end they pushed Calgary to the brink. There are plenty of positives for Winnipeg to take from this game.
I still have questions about the ceiling of Matt Nichols. One play in particular sticks out in my mind: Down 10-0 in the first quarter, Nichols badly missed a wide open Weston Dressler. That would have been a 20-yard gain easily. The better quarterbacks don’t miss those throws and those types of plays are what lead to a team amassing a mere 18 yards of offence and two first downs in the first quarter. It really was a tale of two halves for Nichols, who could not get his team past midfield ’til around 7:40 of the second quarter and yet he was fearless in that fourth quarter. Nichols also displayed his smarts on that five-yard touchdown pass to Julian Feoli-Gudino, looking off his first two options before finally spotting his target just as the pocket was collapsing.
One final note about the Calgary offensive line: It was shocking to see the number of times that unit created a perfect pocket for Mitchell to operate behind. No matter how many men Winnipeg would blitz, no matter what stunts the defensive line would try, the Calgary line would not allow anyone to touch Mitchell. The Jerome Messam 15-yard touchdown run was more about demoralizing a defensive line than it was opening up a giant hole for Messam to saunter through.
As for Winnipeg, as mentioned above, we will learn more about the Bombers down the stretch as they face the Lions and REDBLACKS twice. To the murky question of what did we learn from them as they went toe to toe with the leagues best, well, that is for each of you decide. If I was a Winnipeg fan, it would have definitely felt like a punch in the gut moments after the final whistle. But after the pain subsided I could easily see a glimmer of hope, of better days ahead.
