O'Shea, Dinwiddie open up on connections with their QBs

11/12/2024 07:00 PM

Ryan Dinwiddie sat next to Mike O’Shea and stated the obvious, that he thought the teams with the two best quarterbacks in the league were the last two teams standing.

Dinwiddie’s Toronto Argonauts and O’Shea’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers will meet in the 111th Grey Cup on Sunday for the second time in three years. While both teams have the last two Most Outstanding Player winners from the past two seasons — Chad Kelly won it with the Argos in 2023 and Zach Collaros won it for a second year in a row in 2022 —  we won’t see that QB matchup on Sunday.

Kelly, of course, injured his leg in the Eastern Final this past Saturday. Dinwiddie immediately named backup Nick Arbuckle his starter for this week’s game. Collaros will obviously start as he and the Bombers take part in their fifth consecutive Grey Cup appearance. For each coach, the road to this game has been difficult in its own ways and each one had their faith in their quarterbacks put to the test. Their decisions helped shape their seasons and ensure that they’d meet in the season’s final game on Sunday. Both discussed their connections to their starting quarterbacks on Tuesday morning in the annual Grey Cup coaches conference.

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BENCHING COLLAROS NEVER AN OPTION IN SLOW START

The Bombers started their season 0-4 and were 2-6 before they began to turn their season around. In that time, Collaros and the Bombers’ offence was having trouble conjuring up its usual magic. Collaros didn’t throw a touchdown pass until Week 6. By Week 8, he had three touchdowns to his name, with eight interceptions as well. With a proud franchise staring up at three other teams in the West Division at that point, O’Shea laughed at the concept of making a change at quarterback at that point.

“I don’t know that there’d be any coach in our league that would have switched Zach out,” O’Shea said. “He’s too good.”

Keep in mind that Bo Levi Mitchell — who finished as the East nominee for Most Outstanding Player — briefly lost his starting job with the Tiger-Cats at 2-7, while having more yardage and touchdowns than Collaros. The Bombers were 3-6 at that time, just one win into what turned out to be a season-altering eight-game streak.

O’Shea seems to have an undying appreciation and unshakeable faith in Collaros, whose 2019 arrival started this incredible run of five consecutive Grey Cup appearances. His decision to stay the course through a uniquely challenging stretch in his time as the Bombers’ head coach is a reflection of what’s made the group so successful.

“He’s too much of a competitor,” O’Shea said of Collaros. “His leadership skills, the guys follow him. I’ve said this for eight years now, maybe more, there’s no need for knee jerk if you know the answers as to why things are happening the way they’re happening.

“If everybody has a great understanding of that, then you just work on those items and getting them checked off and eventually it turns for you. Yeah, there would be no thought.”

DINWIDDIE A FAN OF ARBUCKLE’S BEFORE DAY 1

Dinwiddie first saw film of Nick Arbuckle when he was at Georgia State. The quarterbacks’ coach with the Calgary Stampeders at the time, he was fully in favour of having Arbuckle added to the negotiation list.

“I thought he had opportunity to play in this league,” Dinwiddie said. “I just think he’s a great leader. I don’t think anybody works harder than him. He’s the guy that I had to kick out of weight room because he was doing too much on Day 4, like, ‘We’ve got a game tomorrow, man, what are you power lifting for?’

“That’s just who he is. I think now he’s starting to slow that down a little bit, understand what it takes to be a pro and not overthinking some things, because he is pretty intelligent. He Understands football. I told him, ‘Football sometimes can be pretty simple. You let the defence take you where you need to go. You don’t have to watch a million hours of film.’

“Sometimes you talk yourself into stuff based off what you see. Just react to what it is. But he’s a great character. He’s a selfless type of guy, we want that in (every guy) we have in our room.”