Winnipeg Blue Bombers try to explain poor defensive performance

Photo: Samantha Keen/3DownNation. All rights reserved.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have had one of the CFL’s best defences for many years, often picking up the slack for a sluggish offence.

On Thursday night at Princess Auto Stadium, there was a Freaky Friday-like role reversal as the offence roared for 27 points and 459 net yards, while the defence offered little resistance against a dominant Hamilton Tiger-Cats attack.

Bo Levi Mitchell threw the ball at will, completing 19-of-24 pass attempts for 287 yards and three touchdowns. His numbers would have been even better had he not overthrown a deep shot to Kenny Lawler at the end of the first quarter, which would likely have resulted in a 102-yard touchdown.

The outcome was a 37-27 win for Steeltown, sending the sold-out crowd of 32,343 home feeling disappointed. It was just the team’s eighth regular-season home loss since 2021.

After the game, 3DownNation spoke to over a half-dozen defensive starters about the unit’s performance.

“(Our performance was) horrible. We’ve just gotta play better. As a whole defence, we’ve just got to do a better job, and give us a chance to win the game. We just couldn’t stop anything,” said Jake Ceresna. “They played a great game, kudos to them. They had a great game plan, but we have to watch the film and see what the issues are, but a lot of times I feel like we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot.”

“We didn’t play well enough,” said Redha Kramdi. “Mental mistakes, three levels — from the line, to the second level, to the back end — we didn’t execute at a high level, and when you play a good opponent, you get exposed, and we played horrible. We need to take ownership in that loss. The offence did amazing and it’s a team sport, but the offence put enough points for us to win the game easily, so we need to do better as a defence.”

“It’s just small mistakes — alignment, assignment. It was not at our standards. It was way off our standards, and it’s killing me that the offence put up great quality football, and we couldn’t on defence give us a chance to win … I think they had a beat on what we were doing, but even if they had a beat on what we’re doing, if we execute at a high level, we can cover. There’s rules in this defence, and we didn’t execute — we didn’t read our keys, and that’s what happened.”

Last year, Winnipeg’s defence allowed a league-low 34 touchdowns and 21.4 points per game. The unit accomplished this without relying on an elite pass rush, which ranked ninth with only 23 sacks. Instead, it disguised eight and nine-man coverages to create tight passing windows, and consistently contested catches.

The numbers clearly illustrate this. In 2025, the CFL’s other eight defences allowed completion percentages between 68.5 and 72.4. Against the Blue Bombers, quarterbacks completed only 62.2 percent of their passes.

“We’ve gotta do better. You’ve seen it, you know. Ain’t nothing to talk about, it ain’t no secret. We gotta hold ourselves to certain standards,” said Deatrick Nichols. “It’s only the first two games. We got 16, 17, 18 more games, so we’ll be all right. Go to the drawing board. We did some good things, bad things, but we’ve just gotta fix and continue this marathon that we’re trying to run.”

“It’s basic stuff. Nothing too crazy, just play old-school, eight-year-old football. Line up right to the ball, tackle, cover, all of the basic things.”

The defence’s lack of fundamentals were certainly a problem.

Larry Rountree III rushed 23 times for 124 yards, many of which came after contact with defenders in his wake. The 27-year-old was playing only his second career regular-season CFL game but looked like Mike Pringle ripping through would-be tacklers.

For context, Winnipeg was relatively strong against the run last year, tying for third league-wide with 5.0 yards per carry allowed.

“We played young, didn’t tackle well enough,” said head coach Mike O’Shea. “At some point, you just gotta make the decision to wrap up and tackle somebody. I thought we could have got off the field a couple more times just by cleaning up the tackling.”

“I just think we fell short sometimes of our gaps. I don’t think we were getting pushed around, actually, it didn’t feel like that. It just felt like there was loss of gap integrity and some tackling. Better tackling was needed.”

“You have to give credit to Hamilton. They’re well-coached, it’s well-designed (on offence), and it’s run by a hell of a good quarterback.”

“It was a tough game,” said Cameron Lawson. “We’ve just gotta play better at the end of the day. We gave up too many explosions. We didn’t stop them on the run when we needed to. Just overall, it wasn’t a great performance from us, and we’ve gotta get better off of it.”

“I think we played a little better in the second half. First half, we just gotta come off the ball early, and we gotta be lights out early. We can’t start slow like that and let teams get ahead that much, because then it’s just an uphill battle. It opens up their playbook, it closes down ours a little bit, and you’re kind of had a disadvantage, like in a chess match.”

“We’ve got some young players in, and we’ve gotta get their IQ up, and knowing more, and getting them more reps, and just coming together and working on what we need to work on. There’s clear things that obviously we need to fix.”

The defence has now started slow in both of Winnipeg’s first two regular-season games. The unit allowed three touchdowns on Calgary’s first five possessions in Week 1, then three touchdowns on Hamilton’s first four possessions in Week 2.

Obviously, this is unsustainable. For a team to win games consistently, its defence can’t give up 21-plus points before halftime each and every week.

“We just didn’t do a good job,” said Evan Holm. “I didn’t do a good job either as a leader out there, but Bo and Scott (Milanovich), they do a good job over there. They have a lot of things that kind of schemed us up. We missed some ones where we were in good calls, we missed some plays, missed some tackles. We’ve just got to play better, but they did a great job, so I don’t want to take anything away from them. They made their plays.”

“I think we just kind of let it compound from the first half. We didn’t have a good first half, it seemed like everything was working. We had adjustments, just make the plays after half, and we didn’t do that. We kind of just let it compound. Everybody’s taking turns making mistakes, or we’re making multiple mistakes — missing tackles, too, and I feel like we missed a lot of tackles as a defence, myself included. We kind of let it compound. We didn’t kind of flush it, it just kind of carried into that second half, in my opinion.”

“We’ve gotta be better,” said Jonathan Moxey. “We still had a way to come back and in the end and have a chance, but we’ve got to do better, starting off in the first quarter, second quarter as well — just first half, in general. Give ourselves a better opportunity to win.”

“Every team in the CFL, just in football in general, they’re gonna come out with new stuff that you haven’t seen. The stuff that you might see on film, the first 15 to 20 plays is gonna be something completely different — something they scheme us, the way we scheme them. We just gotta find a way to scheme back and to execute defensively to do better.”

“I felt like, as a whole, there was plays we left out there on the field,” said Tony Jones. “At the end of the day, for us to be an elite defence, all 12 of us are going to have to do our jobs at our best ability. I felt like as a whole, we didn’t play our best defence. We know we’re way better than that.”

“I’m not sure (why we weren’t able to bounce back in the second half). I felt like throughout the week we had good prep and whatever it was. I just felt like, as a whole, we just weren’t as sharp as we were supposed to be.”

Points have skyrocketed through six regular-season CFL games in 2026, averaging 59.0 per game. Last year, which was higher-scoring than most, saw an average of 52.9.

It stands to reason that offences won’t be able to keep up such a torrid pace as the year progresses, which seems like good news for all nine defences.

As for how the Blue Bombers will get better on defence, one veteran defender offered a plan for how to get back on track.

“Take the corrections from (defensive coordinator Jordan Younger), learn from your mistakes, make your plays. We’ve just got to make our plays — when we’re one-on-one, we have a job to make,” said Holm.

“Sometimes it’s going to be me, sometimes could be someone else. We’ve just got to do our job, do what we’re asked to do. It’s game two, so there’s a lot to correct, a lot to go over, which is good. We can’t dwell on it, but we can’t take this lightly either, because since I’ve been here, we haven’t played like that in a while.”