We now take you inside the Winnipeg Blue Bombers bunker at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, where the team braintrust—CEO Wade Miller, general manager Kyle Walters and head coach Mike O’Shea—are using a bye week to review their first eight games and plot strategy for the back half of the Canadian Football League crusade…
O’SHEA: “I don’t know about you, Kyle, but I feel like we’ve dodged a bullet.”
WALTERS: “We? We didn’t dodge anything. It was your ass on the line, not mine. Wade and I already had you blindfolded, lit you a cigarette and had you standing against a wall. One more loss and…let’s just say it’s a good thing for you that Wade ordered me to order you to start Matt Nichols at quarterback and put Drew Willy in the dumpster when we were 1-4. Ain’t that right, Wade? ”
O’SHEA: “Ya, I guess we were wrong about Willy.”
WALTERS: “We? We weren’t wrong about anything, Mike. Wade and I wanted Nichols to start at QB right from the get-go. Right outta training camp. But oooooh no. You had to have it your way. I swear, you’re as mule-headed as Wade is round. If we’d let you have it your way, Willy’d still be the starting quarterback and we’d be 1-7 instead of 4-4. Actually, you’d be outta Dodge and the old sheriff would be the new sheriff in town. Ain’t that right, Wade?”
O’SHEA: “You telling me that Paul LaPolice is here as offensive coordinator just so you have someone to step in if I screw up?”
WALTERS: “Do the math, Mike.”
O’SHEA: “Ya, let’s do some math. Now that we’ve got this thing turned around and won our last three games, maybe it’s time we talked numbers. Like numbers on a new contract. I’m what those annoying media people call—quote-unquote—a lame-duck coach, ’cause I’m on the last year of my contract. You’re good to go until the end of 2017, so what about me?”
WALTERS: “What you just said is the very reason we can’t give you a contract extension—I’m good to go only until the end of next year. That’s it. There’s no guarantee that Wade’s gonna keep me around after 2017. Maybe he’s already got someone in mind to replace me. Someone like Eric Tillman. So, again, do the math, Mike. Until I get an extension, you don’t get one. Besides, we’re not convinced you’ve turned this thing around. How do we know you won’t go back to Willy at the first sign of trouble? When Wade ordered me to order you to name Nichols the starting quarterback, you told the media that we hadn’t seen the last of Drew Willy. That he’d be back.”
O’SHEA: “The day I start Willy at quarterback again is the day I stop wearing my creepy short pants on the sideline. I’ve seen enough film to know that Matt Nichols is my main man.”
WALTERS: “Trust us, Mike, there’s only one way you’ll ever, ever, ever start Drew Willy at QB again—if Matt is in the hospital and there’s a priest beside his bed. It ain’t gonna happen. Meanwhile, it’s about those shorts of yours. What’s up with that?”
O’SHEA: “Did you bring me here to win football games or to get on the cover of GQ magazine?”
WALTERS: “Well, until recently, you and your short pants weren’t doing either one of those things. You’re 16-28!”
O’SHEA: “Ya, and you’re 18-38 in long pants! So what’s your point?”
WALTERS: “I guess my point should be that neither of us belongs on the cover of GQ and both of us are lucky that we can still afford to buy a new pair of pants, short or long. Most teams would have fired both of our sorry asses by now. I mean, I’m 18-38. You’re 16-28. What part of pathetic does the board of directors not understand?”
O’SHEA: “I think maybe Wade has ’em hoodwinked. He scares ’em. Or maybe he’s got incriminating pictures, or something. That’s gotta be it.”
WALTERS: “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you don’t screw this thing up by doing something stupid the rest of the way, like sending Clarence Denmark home to sit on a couch in Florida again.”
O’SHEA: “I didn’t get rid of Clarence in the first place. You released him in the off-season.”
WALTERS: “Ya, because after I spent all that money on Weston Dressler and Ryan Smith, I couldn’t afford to pay Clarence anymore. But now that he’s back and making mice nuts for a wage, he’s a keeper.”
O’SHEA: “And what do I do with Dressler and Smith once they’re healthy? I can’t have my highest-paid receivers standing on the sidelines.”
WALTERS: “Why not? You’ve got a $400,000 quarterback holding a clipboard on the sidelines. You’re winning without him. And you’re winning without Dressler and Smith and all the other high-priced starters who’ve been injured. What does that tell you?”
O’SHEA: “It tells me that you have spent a lot of money foolishly. Ain’t that right, Wade?”
Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 46 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.
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