Jun
Kelly just warming up
Courtesy Winnipeg Free Press:
The wind was blowing from the north and the temperature had fallen to single digits. The multiple digits on the field were either being heated the old-fashioned way — heavy breathing — or with gloves.Welcome to June, Blue Bombers.
Yet there was at least one guy on the Canad Inns turf Sunday oblivious to the elements.
“I didn’t even know what the weather was doing, honest to God,” Mike Kelly said, moments after overseeing his first full training camp practice session. “I was out there coaching the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. It could have been a hurricane and a tornado and a blizzard all at once. It didn’t really matter.
“I was out there with our guys now. And I feel good about it.”
To be sure, Kelly has had to weather a few storms already since taking over the Bombers, although they’ve been nothing to alert the cable news satellite trucks about.
There’s been a few back-handed barbs about former management, in particular ex-GM Brendan Taman. There’s been a couple of minor scraps with the league over rules. There was a comment involving a particular body region and Saskatchewan.
But those have been a gentle breeze compared to the avalanche of angst caused by Kelly’s gutting of the 2008 Bombers — Oh, my heavens, whatever will the Bombers do without Ryan Dinwiddie?!! — to the point of being unrecognizable but for a Doug Brown here and a Arjei Franklin there.
You can see — or can’t see — the changes everywhere. There was a No. 5 on the field Sunday, but that was linebacker Barrin Simpson. There was a No. 1, too, but that was a young fellow named Willie Byrd, a defensive back from Miles College in Alabama.
Then you see former defensive lineman Jon Oosterhuis, of all people, catching a pass out of the backfield. Oh, right, Oosterhuis is a fullback now.
Milt Stegall, gone. Dan Goodspeed, gone. Kevin Glenn, gone. Charles Roberts, Zeke Moreno, Tom Canada. Gone, gone, gone.
Then there’s the matter of Kelly’s new regime.
I mean, you’d have to live on a deserted island not to know about the self-inflicted turnover that rendered the Bombers 2008 players guide irrelevant. Or, you know, be Joe Smith.
“At the very first meeting I asked, ‘Where’s Joe Smith?’ ” Kelly noted, referring to the Bombers’ eccentric fullback, who has a tendency to shun the outside world. “He was sitting over in the corner. I said, ‘Joe, did you know we had a coaching change? I’m Mike Kelly.’ And that broke the ice a little bit.”
At least, until it froze over again Saturday night.
Still, that’s also the real beauty of Day 1: At long last beginning the process of moving focus from the lost to the found. Did you see that one-handed grab by wideout Adarius Bowman? Or how about that Franklin catching the back end of a lob from heir-apparent starter Stefan LeFors?
And how about that rifle arm on the ample frame of Darrell Hackney? (Early prediction: We’re not sure if all of Hackney will make the team, but most of him could.)
No wonder the blustery, overcast weather was the least of Kelly’s concerns. For the first time since being handed the reins yanked out of Doug Berry’s hands last November, Kelly could begin working with the fleshy clay he assembled with personnel director John Murphy in a sometimes turbulent off-season. It’s probably what attracted a few dozen spectators out at 7:45 a.m. on a disagreeable Sunday morning, too.
Because there’s no end of opinion about what Kelly has done to date; either: a) dismantled an 8-10 team going nowhere with a mediocre QB; b) gone all Frankenstein on a decent team that only needed tweaking; c) angered the football gods with what can be perceived as arrogance and d) rashly/bravely (take your pick) decided to start the 2009 season with a stable of neophyte quarterbacks.
But the days of debating whether, for example, jettisoning Kevin Glenn was a bad idea are over. Soon, LeFors will make Bombers fans forget Glenn or rued the day Kelly let him go. No more idle chatter about the merits of such an aggressive overhaul.
It’s all going to be spelled out, in blue and gold. Beginning Sunday, a bunch of hypothetical, unknown players were given numbered jerseys and made their way onto a field most were seeing for the first time.
The talking and speculation ends. The reality and building begins.
But the whole process promises to be just as unpredictable as, well, the weather.
Talk about a football team made for Manitoba.
