First and foremost I have a lot of respect for Winnipeg’s coaching staff particularly Mike O’Shea’s leadership which has cultivated one of the best team cultures in the CFL. This is not an indictment on the coach’s abilities to do their jobs, but an evaluation of a 1-game window that just so happened to be the most important game of the year. However, this is professional football so I’m not going to sugarcoat it. This was frankly a really poorly managed game on both sides of the ball for Winnipeg with a commitment to a game plan that made no sense and did not work.

One way to look at this loss for Winnipeg is that it sets the stage for a very interesting story next year for them as they will be very hungry to win the Grey Cup at home next year. However, this will be a frustrating game for Winnipeg to look back on for a long time.

Grey Cup 111: The Impact From Every Defensive Player, Offensive Lineman, Expanded Unofficial Defensive Stats, Grey Cup Clink Awards

A Poor Game From Winnipeg’s Coaching Staff – Defensively

Winnipeg failed to disrupt Toronto from their game plan throughout the course of the Grey Cup and did not make adjustments in their defensive game plan. Nick Arbuckle was thrust into the starting role following the injury to Chad Kelly last week. My philosophy is that when you have a quarterback thrust into the role of being the starter it is beneficial to make their life uncomfortable by finding ways to get pressure on him. The Bombers elected for more of a friendly Manitoba type of strategy by often only rushing 3 and dropping more players into coverage. This resulted in Arbuckle often having a lot of time to look for receivers to get open.

The defensive scheming with the locations of the defensive backs also was peculiar at times with an overly passive approach with halfbacks often dropping back beyond the first down marker allowing for relatively easy first downs from Arbuckle. It seemed obvious to me before this game that Toronto was going to operate a passing game that primarily sustained itself on short passing plays. Winnipeg’s defensive scheme was the perfect match to allow their opponent to have success playing the style of football they were setting out to play.

A Poor Game From Winnipeg’s Coaching Staff – Offensively

Winnipeg made no sense on offense. For the entirety of the last 5 seasons that have seen Winnipeg make every Grey Cup, the Bombers have been a smash-mouth football team. Brady Oliveira was just named the Most Outstanding Player this season yet he was only handed the rock 11 times which he turned into 84 yards and a touchdown. Winnipeg did not hand Brady the ball until their third offensive possession after they went 2 and out on the first 2 drives. 

Looking at Oliveira’s numbers as the game progressed, he rushed 6 times in the first half for 37 yards, 6.16 yards per carry. Then in the third quarter, he gets 3 rushes for 43 yards, 14.33 yards per carry. Then over the final quarter, the only 2 rushes he has are one at the 1-yard line for a touchdown, and then the following play he scores a 2-point conversion. Outside of goal-line scenarios, Winnipeg only had 3 handoffs to Oliveira in the entire second half. The run was working very well and Winnipeg had the lead at 10-9 at halftime. However, they abandoned the run to force a completely broken passing game that was doing more harm than good.

Winnipeg handed the ball to Oliveira just 11 times compared to the 30 pass attempts from Collaros despite it being a close game for the majority of the match. Collaros goes on to complete just 15 of his 30 passes for 202 yards and 4 interceptions. 9 of those completions came within the final 5 minutes of the game for 88 yards. Over the first 55 minutes of the game, Collaros only had 6 completions for 114 yards.

Winnipeg’s failure to lean into their strength in the run game while forcing a broken passing game did the offensive line no favors in pass protection. Toronto had a lot of success in generating pressure on Collaros. Often times you will see defenses have a stronger pressure rate against a team that is not mixing in a healthy balance of the run game. By my count, there were 17 total plays in which pressure was allowed from Winnipeg’s offensive line unit. Only 5 pressures in the first half and then 12 in the second half. The quality of pass protection suffered for Winnipeg due to not running the ball.

Winnipeg saw the impact abandoning the run has on the pass rush firsthand in the 2023 Western Final against BC when the Lions didn’t run the ball for the final 34 minutes of the game. Winnipeg tied a record for most sacks in a CFL playoff game that day at 7.

The final poor decision regarding the passing game was to keep Collaros in the game following the cut on his hand. Mike O’Shea said of the injury to the media following the game “He had an extremely hard time gripping the ball.” It was evidently affecting his throws as the ball was being released more like a shot put than a snap of a football but Winnipeg remained committed to their quarterback who looked like he could barely even hold the ball properly after getting stitches let alone throw it. And he was already having a very poor game before the stitches.

I cannot believe that there wasn’t a coach, player, or Collaros himself to say what everyone watching the game thought which was that Collaros’ hand was not good enough to be throwing the ball for Winnipeg.

Props to Toronto’s Game Plan

Nick Arbuckle after the game: “We all knew exactly where the ball was going to go on almost every play. What are reads were, what our drops were, what the throws were going to be, how we were going to win the game. What was needed of us in every moment. That’s been us all season long, and it all starts with Coach Miller.”

Toronto’s coaches brought a sensible game plan and it was working very well against Winnipeg’s game plan. The Argos were taking what the defense gave them while Winnipeg was forcing what Toronto’s defense was not making available to them. The Argos came prepared to play chess while Winnipeg seemed ready for tic-tac-toe.

A Pattern of Loser Playoff Teams Abandoning the Run

Strangely all 5 of the games this year in the CFL postseason saw offenses on the losing team have a stark imbalance of incorporating the run game and have an imbalanced offense regarding how often the run was utilized. It makes sense that in each case a team did this they lost the game. In the Easter Semi-Final, Ottawa passed the ball 61 times while they handed the ball off to Bralon Addison and DeVonte Dedmon a combined 6 times. In the Western Semi-Final BC passed the ball 33 times while handing the ball to William Stanback only 7 times. In the Eastern Final, Montreal passed the ball 42 times while they handed it off only 9 times. In the Western Final, Saskatchewan passed 44 times while handing it off 12 times. Then finally in the Grey Cup Winnipeg forced 30 passes while giving it to the reigning MOP for just 11 rushes.

@JonathanClink on X