That changing of the guard in the CFL West?
After winning the coin toss, the Leos got a punch in the mouth, instead.
With a chip on their shoulders and a game plan pinned on the arm of Zach Collaros, the Bombers served notice they’re not ready to age out and fade away just yet, throttling the Lions, 50-14, to join them in first place.
Consider that 30-6 loss to the Leos in June avenged — and then some.
“It was an offensive statement that we’re back,” receiver Kenny Lawler said, post-game, after covering 200 yards through the air. “We’re going to be very, very dynamic and we’re going to be a force to be reckoned with.”
Why not, when you’ve got Lawler, Dalton Schoen and Nic Demski running under rainbows?
Pierce didn’t even flinch when his team found itself on its own five-yard line the first time it had the ball.
Collaros to Lawler for 34 then to Schoen for 71, and the 105 yards were covered.
The next time they got the ball — after the defence stuffed a Lions third-and-one around midfield — the Bombers offence took just one play to go the distance: Collaros heaving it some 48 yards in the air with Lawler taking care of the remainder.
“Maybe it’s like a reminder for teams,” running back Brady Oliveira said. “We know in this locker room that we’re the best team in the West. We know that. If you want to call it a redemption game or whatever – we don’t. We just worry about the next team on our schedule.”
But…
“Going out there and putting up as many points as we did does send a message and shows that we have an electric offence,” he added. “Best offence in the league. Best offensive line in the league. Weapons all around.”
The Lions defence had been giving up some 250 yards per game, going in.
“We are who we are,” is how linebacker Adam Bighill put it. “This is our team. We talk about what we try to accomplish… how we want to play football, no matter who we’re playing against. The statement says we executed at a very, very high level on really all three phases.”
They had to.
Because so much hung on this one.
The four-point swing in the standings. The psychological edge for the winner.
Maybe even revenge, although the Bombers refused to embrace that animal in the days leading up to the game.
The salt they rubbed into the B.C. wound as the score piled up suggests something else entirely.
“Most definitely,” Willie Jefferson said. “We didn’t want the revenge story to be what drove us. At the beginning of the week… Coach O’Shea told us if you’re living in the past, you don’t have room to grow. Once he said that, all that revenge talk all went out the window.
“But … when we strap up the pads and go against a team that beat us like they did the first time and they’re back in our house, we had to go out there and handle business, no matter what. Had to. It was a must.”
“It’s a must-have win when you’re playing a team three times,” Bighill acknowledged. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Edmonton, Calgary, it doesn’t matter who it is. You’re playing someone three times, you’ve got to be able to be playing for the season series.
“You don’t where things are going to shake out by November.”
The rubber match is still a long way out, in Vancouver in early October.
“I wouldn’t say we’re back,” Demski said. “Because we never left. We’re here, though. That was a statement game to just prove who we are.”
They’re still a contender.
But, just maybe, with a different way of doing it.
