Late-game blunders from the Bombers give the Riders an improbable Banjo Bowl win

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers came achingly close to achieving improbable revenge for last week's 52-0 beatdown at the hands of the archrival Saskatchewan Roughriders, but blown late-game decisions meant that they wound up on the losing side of Sunday's Banjo Bowl, falling 25-24 on a last-second Sandro DeAngelis field goal. It was an impressive showing from a Bombers' squad that few figured had any chance against the team that just blew them out. However, that's going to be largely overlooked by most thanks to the late-game moves that gave Saskatchewan a chance to pull off an incredible comeback. The Riders deserve plenty of credit for their own late-game execution, of course, but Winnipeg lost this game more than Saskatchewan won it. The loss drops the Bombers to 2-8, further dampens their already-soggy playoff hopes and will increase the pressure on general manager Joe Mack and head coach Tim Burke.

Through the first 58 minutes of this game, the Bombers' performance was worthy of a rather different story. The motivation for them was obvious, but given their struggles this year, it seemed rather unlikely that they could even hang in there against a team that demolished them so thoroughly just the week before. Of course, home-field advantage always helps, and the fans at Canad Inns Stadium gave their team a tremendous amount of support Sunday despite their dismal record to this point. It also favoured the Bombers that Saskatchewan starting quarterback Darian Durant got hurt early on, putting pressure on relatively untested backup Drew Willy. Still, this was impressive play from Winnipeg on both offence and defence, and the Bombers' overall stats on the day certainly aren't bad. Running back Chad Simpson wasn't continuously effective, but picked up a very respectable 74 yards in total on nine carries thanks mostly to one particularly big play, while quarterback Joey Elliott turned in a workmanlike 19-for-33 (57.6 per cent) showing for 241 yards without an interception. The defence also generally looked better than it had all year, holding the Riders' quarterbacks under 200 passing yards, shutting down Kory Sheets (who had just 32 rushing yards on 12 carries) and limiting Saskatchewan to 25 points on the day (well below the 32.9 points the Bombers had conceded on average heading into this game). Still, that all proved to be for naught thanks to struggles with late-game calls and execution.

The crucial moment came on the Bombers' last drive. With less than a minute left, the team led by one and faced a third-and-three in Saskatchewan territory. The conventional call here would be to go for a field goal, which would have been quite makable from 43 yards and would have given them a four-point lead, forcing the Riders to go for a touchdown. The preferred call from this standpoint would have been going for the first down; the average CFL team converted a third-and-three 67.5 per cent of the time in 2009, and even given the Bombers' less-than-stellar offence, those aren't bad odds at all (considering that a conversion likely would have allowed them to kill the rest of the clock and walk away with a victory, while a failure would still have made the Riders drive for a field goal). Winnipeg opted for neither, though, instead choosing to punt and attempt to pin Saskatchewan deep, and that proved fatally flawed; although Mike Renaud has been very good at pinning teams inside the 10 on the year, his punt Sunday bounced into the end zone, allowing the Riders to concede a single and start on their 35, not far from where they would have been following a failed third-down-attempt.

Of course, the problem here was execution as well as decisions. If Renaud gets that punt to bounce out inside the 10, the Riders would have been faced with quite a long field and very little time. Even after the punt failed, the Bombers' defence could have come up with a play or two; instead, they allowed Sheets to pick up a big gain and then get out of bounds and Willy to first hit a wide-open receiver over the middle, then run and slide for a big first down that gave DeAngelis a game-winning field-goal attempt from 40 yards. If the Bombers had been able to get pressure on DeAngelis or block that field goal, or if DeAngelis had missed it, the questions about Burke's late-game decisions would be a footnote instead of the story. Still, Burke's call to go for the punt instead of the field goal or the first down hurt the Bombers' chances of victory; there's no guarantee either alternate decision would have worked out, but the odds seem better with either of those other moves. It may have been the failures of execution that ultimately cost Winnipeg the game, but the decision to punt set those up, and that's the primary reason why the Bombers are now 2-8 and facing even more criticism instead of 3-7 and hoping to turn things around.