Muskies asking ‘Why not?’ in playoffs

Why not?
If the Boston Red Sox did it, then why can’t the Muskie varsity (‘A’) football team?
If the Red Sox came back down 3-0 to the N.Y. Yankees to win the American League pennant and advance to the World Series, then why can’t the Muskies beat the Churchill Bulldogs this Friday in the quarter-finals of the WHSFL?
After the black-and-gold closed out a 1-6 regular-season record with a 35-0 loss to the River East Kodiaks here Friday afternoon, head coach Bob Swing asked that same question to his players in the locker-room.
Why not?
“I asked them who thought the Red Sox were going to win and a couple of guys put up their hands, and they’re lying because no one in the free world thought the Red Sox were going to come back 3-0,” said Swing.
“With the Red Sox, everyone said, ‘You’re not going to win, you’re down 3-0, it’s never happened before.’ Everyone said it.
“So why not? Because you got beat 35 points by a team, or you got beat 60 points by this team, well why not?” Swing repeated.
Leading up to their game against the Kodiaks, who had scored only 50 points in six games up to that point of the season, the Muskies probably had their best week of practice with the infusion of 13 Bantam (‘B’) players.
The team was able to run full units for the whole week of practice, which it hadn’t been able to do all season long.
And they entered the game pumped up more than a Fox reality TV program—confident they would do well.
“We were prepared and I thought we were just going to kick some [butt], and I thought we were going to win, but we just kept messing up,” tailback Thomas Edwards said.
“I was really pumped up the whole day,” he added. “I just thought it was going to be a good day for us and it didn’t happen.”
What didn’t happen Friday afternoon for the now Muskies was something that has plagued the team for most of the season—lack of execution.
“We stunk,” said Swing. “We made a boatful of mistakes.
“It’s unfortunate because everyone believed in what was going to happen, and then we come out and pretty much played the worst game that we’ve played all year,” he added.
Dropped catches, missed tackles, and botched assignments is something the team must work on this week if they are to play the role of Cinderella come Friday in Winnipeg against the second-ranked Bulldogs (6-1), who beat the seventh-place Muskies 30-0 last month.
“The guys’ hearts are certainly there, but it comes down to positioning and coming up and making those big plays, and we didn’t do that,” said Muskie defensive backs coach Greg Allan.
“I never question their heart, they always go hard,” he stressed. “It’s something else out there, I guess, and we’ve got to find the answer. We need to make the play.
“If it’s a pass, catch the ball. If it’s a tackle, make the tackle,” Allan added. “Football is a simple game and we just got to make those plays.”
One thing is certain in the eight-team ‘AA’ conference of the WHSFL—one of the four lower seeds always seems to upset a higher-ranked team, and the Muskies hope to continue that trend against the Bulldogs.
“Last year it was Grant Park. They finished seventh and they made it to the finals,” noted Muskie offensive co-ordinator Shane Beckett. “[They] were the Cinderella team, and we need to believe that we can be that team [this year].
“We tell these guys every week that we’re good enough to beat anybody out there if we decide to,” Beckett added. “These guys are getting sick of losing and they’re getting sick of seeing a zero on the scoreboard.
“They have to want it, that’s all there is to it,” he stressed.
When Ty Griffith was asked what went wrong after Friday’s loss, the Muskie quarterback was brief but to the point with his response.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Our line did a [heck] of a job. Our offensive line played the best game they played this year.
“But the Muskies never quit,” he stressed. “It’s always been that way. We never quit. We could be down 64-0 and we won’t quit.
“It’s going to be a huge upset [this week],” Griffith vowed. “It doesn’t matter who we play. I just want to go out there and kick the [crap] out of anybody.”
One thing favouring the black-and-gold is that there are no expectations by the WHSFL for them to do anything in the playoffs, but the expectations put on their own shoulders are huge.
The Muskies don’t just want to win this Friday—they want to win the whole thing.
“Winning is immensely important to us, but that’s what winning is all about, right?” said Swing. “You don’t win four league games and then say we had a successful year, but we didn’t win a championship.
“No, if winning is important, then you win championships. You don’t win games, you win championships,” he stressed.
“And that’s what we’re trying to build. We’re trying to build that you do that by doing it the hard way,” he added.
But Swing refuses to sacrifice the development of his players—in terms of football and life—to win football games.
“If I want to win football games, then I got to put my ego on the line and go get paid to do it. That’s what it’s all about, right?
“Vince Lombardi was right—winning is an all the time thing. It’s an every time thing. You do it all the time, with every breath,” Swing added. “You don’t do it right once in a while, you try to win on every play, all the time.”
Football, and any sport for that matter, is all about chance. If anything was certain, then why would anyone play? If everything was already set, then why step onto the field?
And Swing is a believer in that philosophy—and in the idea of “Why not?”
“Why are we going to play then? Why don’t we just pack it in? I’ll send the score sheet in that says, ‘We give up,’” said Swing. “No, no, no. We don’t do that.
“So why not?”