'Extremely surprised': 'No Bighill' means big hole in Blue Bombers' defense

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Winnipeg's Blue Bombers haven't even played a pre-season game and are coming off their first major loss.

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Halfback and undisputed leader of the defense, Adam Bighill, will begin the CFL season on the injured list after six games, throwing a spanner in the works for a unit with a new coordinator.

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The news broke on Wednesday evening.

“Big, huge, huge,” Willie Jefferson described the impact of the following day.

“He's basically a defensive lineman,” Shane Gauthier said.

“It was tough, man,” teammate Kyrie Wilson added. “We were very surprised by it.”

Finally, D-lineman Jake Thomas said, “I don't think anybody is going to come in and replace Adam. You're replacing a Hall of Fame player.”

After their initial reaction, all four had another point in common: They have the people to fill the hole left by the three-time CFL Most Outstanding Defensive Player.

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They take the hit, roll with it, and get back to work, confident in their outdated “next man up” hesitancy.

But even the man leading that chorus realizes there's no substitute for the way No. 4 handles things on the dark side of the offensive line.

“How do you replace Adam Bighill?” such questions arise. Nobody is Adam Bighill,” head coach Mike O'Shea said. “And they shouldn't want to be. They want to be like him, but they have to be themselves. Authenticity is key for Kiri as a leader in the group, leading in her own way, and for Shane in his own way. That's all they can do, and that's what we really want them to do.”

Wilson and Gauthier are the frontrunners to replace Bighill.

While they can run with a human and shoot down ball carriers at the same speed, they don't have a human computer chip to transmit valuable information until they hit the ball.

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A midfielder's job involves calling the defensive play and making sure everyone around and in front of him is in the right position.

But Bighill goes above and beyond that.

“Most of the time, he calls the offensive play,” Thomas said, recalling the times Bighill dictated what the O-line would do.

The others agree.

“He can call plays before they happen,” Gauthier said.

Although Gauthier learned “almost everything” from Bighill, it is hard to learn.

“First and 10, he could call something, it would be something,” Jefferson said. “On second and long, he calls something and he plays.”

This can only come from two sources: experience and an endless desire to learn.

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“He loves football,” Thomas said.

Wilson Bighill describes plays that immediately tell him to move to a certain area, but he doesn't know why until the play happens.

When he's done, he thanks her because he was in the right place.

His enemies are cursing him.

“I always feel like he's in the meeting room with them,” Wilson said with a laugh. “He's been around a long time, so he knows all the tricks and all the little things that the offense tries to get at us. He is special.”

He's also 35 years old, with 183 regular season games and 891 tackles on his odometer, 21 more games and a few dozen postseason games.

The last time we saw Bighill in action, he played a part-time role in the Gray Cup game seven days earlier after tearing his calf muscle in the West Final.

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There is no word on what kind of injuries he sustained this time.

Moving players to the six-game roster will take their salaries off the books and the Bombers could use all the help they can get under the cap.

Teams are allowed to release limited players from their six-game roster early, and O'Shea hopes Bighill will be one of them.

“I hope it won't be a full six, but we'll see,” said the coach. “Biggie will do as much as he can to help his teammates during this time and we'll be fine. We are happy. We have good players in our building who have been in the system for a long time, know how to operate the system and how to communicate through it.

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Wilson lasted five full seasons, Gauthier seven.

“I feel like I'm ready by the time he comes back,” Wilson, 31, said. “I've learned a lot from him and I'm sure he'll still be in the meeting rooms coaching us and helping us if we need help. But I feel up to the task.”

Ditto Gauthier.

“I know I can do it. They know I can do it,” said the 32-year-old. “But we're still in training camp. For example, we don't know anything.”

They know one thing: the size of the hole they need to fill.

For the first time in nine seasons, the Bombers will have Jordan Younger from Richie Hall under a new defensive boss.

The good news: He still has three weeks before the live bullets fly.

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