Winnipeg Blue Bomber fans were a little surprised that the Bombers dropped the season opener against Montreal. Even more surprising though was that razor sharp Castillo went 1/3 on field goals and even missed a point after attempt.

New reports suggest the kicker may not be fully to blame, something Castillo said on the CJOB post-game show. He indicated that the new balls with computer chips in them made it very difficult to know where to aim the ball.

Last year, Castillo hit 90.2% of his field goals. So it was unthinkable for him to only go 33% in the season opener!

You have to wonder why kickers did not express their displeasure before the season. Maybe Castillo was just trying to blame a bad game on the chipped ball. Oh, wait…right! Kickers did express their concerns before the season. In fact, kickers voted10-1 not to use chipped balls.

In their infinite wisdom the CFL waited until Wednesday night, the night before Game 1 in the CFL to make a decision on chipped or non-chipped balls.

You could forgive the CFL for trying to solve a problem that did not exist by going to chipped balls if they were the first league to try it out. However, they are not! In 2022 the USFL tried chipped balls before they went back to regular footballs.

And the CFL? Well it resulted in a comedy of errors.

In the day following the Bombers season opener, the CFL announced that using chipped or non-chipped balls would be up to each team. Sort of a dumb move when only 1 kicker wanted it.

Castillo did not hold back his frustration.

Every time he missed, he says he looked at head coach Mike O’Shea and just threw up his hands.

“I’m like, ‘I hit them clean.’ You go through my practice film, I hit them clean. That is the very frustrating part.”

O’Shea was well aware of the concerns of kickers around the league.

“He’s a 90 per cent kicker,” the coach said of Castillo. “Sergio has kicked 20,000 footballs. If he says he hits it clean, he hits it clean. If it doesn’t do what he thinks it should do, there’s something there.”

Winnipeg Sun

I simply do not see the Bombers using chipped balls in the future. It is a shame that they were forced to use it, and ultimately lose the game. If t he league wanted to be fair, they would make every team use the chipped ball in their first game. Of course that would present a problem in itself, as there are 9 teams, so one team would get away without having to use the chipped ball. Still that seems a whole lot more fair than making 2 teams use the chipped ball and 7 not having to.

Either way, I am still not convinced the Bombers would have won. They simply did not play well enough.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section wherever you are reading this.

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