That’s another fine mess you’ve got Bombers into, coach Controversy about fans booing Matt Nichols wouldn't exist if Mike O'Shea didn't make the call to put him back in By: Paul Wiecek Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2018

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This article was published 21/08/2018 (2320 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last Friday, he criticized the fans.

This week, he criticized the media for making a big deal out of the fact he criticized the fans.

But through it all, Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback Matt Nichols has yet to place blame on the one party most responsible for the current fiasco roiling Bombersland: his head coach, Mike O’Shea.

It was O’Shea — not the fans — who decided last Friday night to send his starting quarterback back into a game that Nichols had left moments earlier with an injury and was a hopelessly lost cause at that point; the Bombers trailed 44-21 with less than five minutes remaining to play.

And it was O’Shea — not the media — who made that inexplicable decision even though Nichols’ backup, Chris Streveler, had been finally moving the offence in Nichols’ short absence on what had been an otherwise frustrating night for the Bombers attack.

Everything that happened after that — the fans booing Nichols when he returned to the game; Nichols criticizing the fans for booing in interviews after the game; the media writing about the fans booing and Nichols criticizing them — was all a response to that singular bone-headed decision by the Bombers coach.

And so, here we are. In a critical week in which the Bombers will face their toughest test of the season so far — a date in Calgary Saturday with the 7-1 Stampeders — the team and its most important player are mired in a controversy entirely of the coach’s making.

That’s not the fans’ fault. On a blistering hot night, they were frustrated, cranky and drunk when O’Shea sent Nichols back out on the field in the dying seconds of a blowout with nothing to gain and everything to lose.

And it’s certainly not the media’s fault. We’d have been rightly accused of dereliction of duty if we hadn’t reported that the fans had booed the starting quarterback and that Nichols, unprompted, lashed out at the fans in a scrum immediately after the game.

The news business is all about “man bites dog,” and in a world where all you normally hear from pro athletes is platitudes about how “our fans are the greatest,” the starting quarterback taking a big chomp out of the fans’ collective behind Friday night was news, big news. And we reported it as such.

Here’s what should have happened Friday night:

With Nichols on the sideline being tended to by training staff late in the game, O’Shea had just one job: be the grown-up.

Of course Nichols wanted to go back into the game, that’s how he’s wired. Nichols acknowledged on Tuesday that he knew the game was lost at that point, but said he wanted to return to the field because he wanted to lose just like he wins — leading his teammates.

That’s honourable and admirable, I suppose, but it’s also entirely beside the point.

Because in that moment, O’Shea’s job wasn’t to nourish his quarterback’s warrior mentality, it was to protect his quarterback, both physically and mentally.

And that meant not sending a guy who missed the first three regular-season games with a knee injury and had just been helped from the field moments earlier back out into harm’s way for no good reason.

And it also meant not sending Nichols back out into a situation where he was almost certainly going to get booed.

Let’s remember that Nichols was already taking fire in Bombers Nation last week after an uninspired performance a week earlier in a win over Hamilton. What did O’Shea think the reaction was going to be when he sent him back out in the dying moments of a lopsided loss, especially with Streveler 4-5 on his passes and rolling at that point?

I’ve been on record these past couple weeks that I think the criticism of Nichols has been misguided. The Bombers have problems, all of which were in stark evidence Friday night. The play of Nichols is the least of them.

But fans have a right to be wrong, and the ones who follow the Blue Bombers have paid for that right more than most through a Grey Cup drought now in its 28th year.

Sending Nichols back out Friday night into that cauldron served no purpose other than to poke the fanbase in the eye.

It was, in other words, vintage O’Shea: stubborn to a fault.

With fans criticizing his guy all week, O’Shea was not about to give them what they wanted in the dying minutes and leave Streveler in. If we’ve learned nothing else over the last four-plus seasons about this coach, it’s that nobody tells Mike O’Shea what to do, even if what they’re telling him is the right thing to do.

It all could have been so simple: with road games this week in Calgary and next week in Regina, O’Shea could have simply sat Nichols out for the final few minutes Friday night, safe in the knowledge that his embattled QB wouldn’t have to face the local fans again until the Banjo Bowl, by which time — with any luck and a win or two in the meantime — the criticism might have died down.

Instead, O’Shea gave the whole thing new oxygen and here we are midweek still talking about his quarterback’s hurt feelings.

Ridiculous. It’s all as unnecessary as it is dumb.

Nichols should have known better. As a quarterback, you never let the fans know they’re getting to you. On the road, that just inspires your opponent’s fans and leads to time-count violations. And at home, well, it looks a lot like this debacle.

O’Shea had a chance to do the simplest of things and solve a problem before it became a bigger one. Instead, he made it worse. A lot worse.

And that’s on him. Not the fans, not the media and not Nichols.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek

Paul Wiecek
Reporter (retired)

Paul Wiecek was born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End and delivered the Free Press -- 53 papers, Machray Avenue, between Main and Salter Streets -- long before he was first hired as a Free Press reporter in 1989.

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