At long last we are back into the CFL season – well actually the pre-season, but hey it is football!

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers opened up the pre-season with a win in Edmonton beating the Elks 25-23. That mean’s that the Elk’s home losing streak continues, as the last time they won a home game was October 12, 2019!

I get it, it was a preseason game. Some will say that pre-season games do not really count and they are just there to see what the team has. Well if that was the case for TSN then their team needs some work.

Imagine trying to grow a league and product and not showing the prolific Winnipeg Blue Bombers versus the struggling Edmonton Elks. The Bombers were back-to-back Grey Cup champs in 2019 & 2021. They even had a chance to 3 peat but blew that in the 2022 Grey Cup. I saw fans on social media watching the football game on their computer because the game was not televised. Even the TSN app was not updating the score. I spoke with someone that was out in the community going door-to-door canvasing and the respondent at the door said, “I can’t talk! I’m watching the football game!”

So there is appetite for pre-season football, yet TSN fumbled the ball on not televising the game. Not only that, but a full day after the game the TSN website has no notes or statistics on the game! Thankfully the app did.

However, someone did come out victorious…the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Everyone looks for something different in pre-season.

Doug Brown thought that the Bombers should look at bringing in another pass rusher.

In another tweet Doug Brown said,

“As Willie J enters his golden years, he needs to be put on a pitch count. To be most effective, he can’t be playing 60 snaps a game.”

For me, I was looking to see how the kickers and quarterbacks would perform.

Kickers

I did not see as much out of the kickers as I would have wanted to. The question for we was whether Castillo would take the job from Lieghhio. However that question still remains as the Bombers only played Staton. For his efforts he his his only field-goal try from 34 yards and all three of his convert attempts. Staton averaged 67.8 yards on kickoffs with the longest being 73 yards. While this is a fairly small sample size, last year Lieghhio averaged 63.9 yards on his kickoffs.

I would suggest that the kicking question has not been answered yet but it would take a lot to unseat both Lieghhio and Castillo. At very least it is nice to see that there could be some options on the radar should the Bombers need to fill that spot due to injury.

Quarterbacks

The Bombers took all four of their quarterbacks to Edmonton: Collaros, Pigrome, Brown, Jones. No, there was not a mistype there…Prukop is not with the Bombers. Prukop decided to try his luck in the USFL.

As expected Zach Collaros took the majority of reps. He completed 5 of 8 for 93 yards and one touchdown reception. Out of the other three Pigrome seemed to shine, but it was on his run plays. Sure one of his touchdowns was from the one yard-line, but it was his romp from 45 yards out in the fourth quarter that had him really stand out.

““My coach back then told me that,” Pigrome said. “Think fast so you can move fast because smooth is fast.”

https://www.bluebombers.com/2023/05/28/upon-further-review-preseason-wpg-25-edm-23/

Certainly Jones is going to get another shot on Friday in Winnipeg to win the the job as the third string quarterback but he is going to really need to shine in order to secure hi spot on the roster.

So what has really been decided? Well, much like most first pre-season games, not much. There are questions, intrigue, and answers still to be determined. I suppose that is why they have a second pre-season game…and hopefully that one provides more clarity for Bomber fans as they head into the regular season.

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