Monday, July 03, 2006

Aerial Assault?

People know I'm the eternal optimist with my teams and that giddyness over the start of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers season wasn't tempered slightly by the fact every so-called "expert" around the Canadian Football League was picking on my beloved Blue.

That said, I'm playing the role of cautious optimist with the Bombers latest spanking, a 46-10 rumbling over the Grey-Cup champion Edmonton Eskimos on Saturday night, specifically as it relates to this man ...


The teaser on the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press on Monday proclaimed "Everyone Loves Glenn" while the main hed on the sports front screamed "Glenn shutting up doubters." After the embattled quarterback had shouldered the brunt of naysayers through the first two weeks of the regular season — as well as all preseason — Glenn stepped up with his best performance as a Bomber on Saturday with this line:

15-24-368-3-0

That three is for touchdowns and the zero? Interceptions. That's over the course of three quarters, to boot.

To be sure it was a nice little effort from Glenn who finally got the memo that Chris Brazzell plays on this team and the deep threat caught two of those three TD strikes.

Still, it's unbelievable to me that one game has all of a sudden made Glenn Public Hero No. 1 when everyone and their sister was rushing to burn his likeness in effigy right up until kickoff on Saturday.

This is where my hesitance comes in. Listen, I'm by far the biggest Glenn hater on the block, in fact this season I'd arguably be considered one of his supporters — sometimes a reluctant one, but a supporter nonetheless. My theory is you dance with the one that brung ya and so long as Kanye is leading this team as its starting quarterback, I live and die with him. In my book, it's fan sacrilege to boo the starter and cheer for the reliever especially in situations where you likely won't be significantly better a team by going to the back-up.

But I digress. It's just to say that I'm excited about the Bombers again but Glenn still needs to back it up with a few more like performances in the coming weeks for me to be completely on board. And Bomber fans are being hypocritical to being rah-rah over Glenn after the Edmonton win when most of them know damn well they'll boo him the first chance they get.

But you know, I documented the lunacy of the Winnipeg football fan in July of last year and how it makes no matter what is actually going on on the field, Bomber fans will always hate their quarterback. Trust me, this honeymoon phase is over as soon as Winnipeg loses another game and Kanye has a subpar performance.

I just hope it's not forthcoming anytime soon.



Other notes from Winnipeg through Week 3: The Bombers haven't allowed a 100-yard rusher yet this season despite facing three of the best in the league to start the season — Robert Edwards, Ricky Williams and Troy Davis. ... Doesn't that just go to show how solid this front seven is? So why, then, did every expert granted a voice have the Bombers finishing somewhere between the Minnesota State Screaming Eagles and the Orlando Breakers? Because of one guy (Glenn) they didn't think could get the job done? Or because we had a dreadful defence last year? ... Glenn's not being asked to do much in the offence and that's a good thing. Charles Roberts was quoted in the FreeP on Monday saying "look at the Pittsburgh Steelers and Ben Roethlisberger. He doesn't put up big-time numbers every week but he wins games and people respect him." Good quote. The similarities should be similar. Roethlisberger shines because the offence — specifically in his rookie year — was simplified to make his life in a tough spot that much easier. So it should be for Glenn and then when he is asked to make a play, he can do it. ... Along those lines, Glenn's best play was his touchdown to Stegall who got open in broken coverage. While the cynic will say all he had to do was throw it to a wide-open man, the reality is Glenn made a nice play by staying in the pocket, checking receivers before rolling out into space and finding Stegall. In order for that play to ever happen, he had to let it happen and that's not something he's always done in the past.

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