The Bombers' Pocket Problem: Why Winnipeg's Offence Can't Beat Pressure

The Pocket Is the Problem

Start with the thing nobody in Winnipeg wants to say out loud: Zach Collaros is 37, and the offensive line in front of him is no longer the one that won him back-to-back Most Outstanding Player awards in 2021 and 2022. Stanley Bryant retired after the 2023 season. Jermarcus Hardrick left for B.C. in 2023 free agency. What's left is a unit patched with imports and converted tackles, and it shows up in one measurable place — the depth of the pocket on five- and seven-step drops.

Watch the Bombers on second-and-eight. Collaros's launch point has crept backward. Where he once hit the top of his drop at seven yards and threw from a stable base, he's now routinely at eight and a half to nine, drifting. That half-yard matters. It flattens the angle on the deep out, forces the boundary receiver to work back to the ball, and turns a rhythm throw into a contested one. Winnipeg's offence under Buck Pierce was built on play-action off Brady Oliveira's zone runs, with Collaros throwing off a clean platform into the intermediate window between the numbers and the sideline. Take away the platform and you take away the offence.

Hogan's Play-Calling: More Shotgun, Same Result

First-year offensive coordinator Jason Hogan has clearly tried to compensate. The 2025 Bombers are in shotgun far more often on early downs than the Pierce-era teams were, and the RPO package has expanded — Collaros reading the backside end on inside zone with a quick slant or bubble attached. It's a sensible response to pressure. It's also a tell.

Here's the tendency defences have figured out: when Winnipeg is in shotgun on first down, the run-pass split tilts heavily toward the pass, and the route concepts narrow. Hogan's answer to a loaded box has been quick game — hitch, slant, and a steady diet of screens to the field — rather than the vertical shots that used to punish single-high coverage. The result is that opposing secondaries are sitting on the short stuff. Winnipeg's yards-after-catch numbers are carrying the passing game more than the air yards are, and that's a losing trade in a league where the field is 65 yards across and the hash marks are nine yards apart.

The tell is on third down. When the Bombers need seven or more, they're back under centre, and everyone in the stadium knows it. That's not a tendency. That's a confession.

Oliveira Is Being Asked to Block His Way to a Title

Brady Oliveira remains the best running back in the CFL. He led the league in rushing in 2023 with 1,534 yards, cleared 1,300 again in 2024, and took home Most Outstanding Canadian. He is also, right now, the most overworked pass protector in the league.

Look at the protection schemes. Winnipeg is keeping Oliveira in on far more downs than it did in 2023, using him as a chip-and-release rather than a pure route runner out of the backfield. That's a structural cost. Every snap Oliveira spends scanning for a blitzing linebacker is a snap he isn't running a checkdown into space, and a snap the defence doesn't have to account for him as a receiver. The screen game to the backs has essentially disappeared from the call sheet.

The counter is obvious and Winnipeg hasn't committed to it: punish the blitz with the back. If defences want to send six, Oliveira on a delayed release against a linebacker is a matchup the Bombers win nine times out of ten. They're not throwing it.

Younger's Defence Is Winning the Wrong Downs

Jordan Younger's unit has been the more functional side of the ball, and the scheme is recognizable: aggressive front, Willie Jefferson on the edge, heavy man coverage behind it with a single-high safety. The problem is where the aggression lands.

Winnipeg generates pressure on first and second down. On second-and-long, the blitz rate drops and the coverage softens — and that's exactly backwards in a three-down league. Second-and-long is the down where a CFL defence has to be willing to live on an island, because the offence only has one more shot. The Bombers' conversion rate allowed on second-and-long is the number that should be on Mike O'Shea's whiteboard every Monday. When you're giving up second-and-long conversions, you're not losing to scheme. You're losing to leverage.

There's a personnel layer too. Winnipeg's boundary corner has been targeted on the back-shoulder fade and the deep comeback all season, and the safety rotation hasn't consistently gotten over the top. In a man-heavy system, that's the cost of doing business — but you have to pay it on the right downs.

What It Means Down the Stretch

Winnipeg has lost three straight Grey Cups — 24-23 to Toronto in 2022, 28-24 to Montreal in 2023, 41-24 to Toronto in 2024 — and the pattern in all three is identical: when the pocket got muddy, the offence had no Plan B. That's not a curse. That's a scheme that never built one.

The fix isn't exotic. Get Collaros under centre on first down and actually hand it off. Throw to Oliveira on third down instead of keeping him in protection. And on defence, blitz on second-and-long instead of second-and-short. The Bombers still have the personnel to win the West and they'll get a Grey Cup at Princess Auto Stadium on November 16 if they earn it. What they don't have, right now, is a playbook that matches the players they actually have.