With the off-season dawning on us, Walters and the Bombers will have to work to sort out things out. Walters’ contract is up this year and he and the organization put talks on hold earlier in the season to focus on the task that was at hand. How, to paraphrase Michael Scott, the turntables. The bulk of them find their way to a sit-down with him ahead of free agency beginning in February and it’s not uncommon for players to take less money to find their fit with his team. Players have hurriedly signed extensions, many of them before the calendar flips over to the new year. General manager Kyle Walters has assembled this powerhouse team and year-after-year his off-season process has been almost identical to the last. Let’s take a look at some of the key issues. For the first time since the team lifted that first Grey Cup in 2019, the Bombers face a uniquely challenging winter that could lead to a substantially different roster taking the field when training camp opens next spring. Since the Bombers got back to Winnipeg, the local media has been all over the Bombers’ off-season outlook. We give you all of that to drop another simple reality: this Blue Bombers team has had an incredible run, playing in four straight Grey Cups, winning in two and racking up wins and league awards over the last three seasons in particular. Instead, Cody Fajardo conjured up some legacy-defining magic of his own in the final two minutes of play, penning a new and final narrative on the 2023 season. Three Grey Cups in four years could nestle you in somewhere behind Edmonton’s five-in-a-row run of the late 1970s and early ’80s who in Edmonton would argue that when Wayne Gretzky’s Oilers took four of five Stanley Cups later in the ’80s? » Sign up and re-watch Grey Cup Week events for free on CFL+Ī win on Sunday would have lifted this Bombers team into rare CFL air. » Three stats that defined the 110th Grey Cup » Dynasty Denied: Bombers drop second straight Grey Cup That means three 15-win teams (the 2022 Bombers, the 2019 Ticats and 2016 Stamps), a 14-win team (the 2013 Stamps) and two 13-win teams (the 2017 Stamps and 2012 Lions) have been left out in the cold after dominating the regular season. In the last 10 seasons (2012-2023, accounting for the cancelled 2020 season), the team with the best record in the league has won the Grey Cup just four times (Winnipeg 2021, Calgary 2018, Edmonton 2015, Calgary 2014). The league has produced two 16-2 teams neither have made it to the Grey Cup game. In a nine-team league, in single-elimination playoff games, anything can happen. The Bombers could have looked across the field this past Sunday and seen Anthony Calvillo - the CFL’s most productive quarterback ever - and remembered that he went 3-5 in Grey Cup games as a player. The Bombers need look no further than the likes of John Hufnagel and Dave Dickenson in Calgary, or to Wally Buono in his time in Calgary and BC as a head coach and general manager, where wins were aplenty over the years, but championship rallies and parades proved tougher to come by. As we slowly move past the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ crushing loss at the 110th Grey Cup, a harsh but simple reality is making itself felt to the organization, players and fans alike: winning is hard.
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