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This article was published 30/8/2016 (1483 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

It’s no secret Winnipeggers hate to pay retail for anything.

And so it has become more than a minor irritant to the local citizenry our city is now home to the highest-paid backup quarterback in CFL history.

We love a good deal. Paying Drew Willy $400,000 to hold a clipboard on the sidelines is the opposite of a good deal.

It’s like owning an expensive new sports car that’s collecting dust in the driveway because you’ve discovered your trusty old Corolla is delivering a better ride.

Matt Nichols is currently excelling as the Corolla. A pleasant surprise to all, it turns out he can do zero to 60 in record time, judging by the way he has completely turned around the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ season since taking over from Willy as the Bombers starting QB in Week 6.

Nichols has done nothing less than rattle off four straight wins and turn what was looking like yet another lost season at 1-4 under Willy into nothing less than the best story in the league at the moment.

There is no longer any question about who this team’s starting quarterback is. It’s Nichols, and it probably should have been Nichols after Week 2 if anyone in this town other than Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea had been making the decision.

Nichols is poised, confident and appears to be uniquely suited to run Paul LaPolice’s offence.

The job interview is now over and Willy has been thanked for his interest. The Bombers, for the foreseeable future, have decided to go in another direction.

So what now? Can the Bombers afford to have an expensive sports car serving as a lawn ornament at Investors Group Field?

Or has the time come for this team to acknowledge the lousy deal it made on what looked like a great car and cut its losses?

The clock is ticking, either way.

Under CFL rules, the Bombers have to do something with Willy and/or his contract by the end of this week or they are locked into paying him the balance of his rich deal for the rest of the season. If Willy dresses for the Bombers in Regina Sunday, his contract becomes guaranteed.

TSN’s Farhan Lalji reported late last week the Bombers want to talk to Willy’s agent about restructuring a deal that will give his client a raise in 2017, when he could earn as much as $450,000.

Paying a backup CFL QB $400,000 is crazy. Paying him even more than that is certifiably insane.

Predictably, neither the Bombers nor Willy’s agent have uttered a public word on the matter, but it seems highly unlikely No. 5 will find himself in the, uh... his pocket to take a pay cut on a deal he signed last year.

The Bombers have a couple of options if Willy balks, but neither of them are appealing.

The team could try to trade him for a more reasonably priced, experienced backup, but Willy’s bloated contract is not going to be any more attractive to another CFL team than it is to the Bombers.

Willy wasn’t awful in the first five games this season, but he wasn’t very good. And CFL teams don’t pay 400 grand to a middling quarterback.

How far has his stock on the open market plummeted this season?

Consider that after starting the season in a group of 20 players you could place a bet on to be the league’s most outstanding player this season, online gambling site bodog.net this week announced it was taking Willy off the board.

Which is to say not even Willy can bet on Willy anymore.

The Bombers’ other option is to cut Willy, the equivalent of driving that Porsche back to the dealership and dropping the keys and financing agreement in the mail slot with a note that says, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

That would only make a bad situation worse for the Bombers. Walking away from Willy now would put the club in a situation where it would have no experience manning the clipboard. Hands up if you’re comfortable with the idea of Dominique Davis leading the offence in the event something happens to Nichols.

Anyone? Bueller?

I’d argue the Bombers currently find themselves in a situation so intractable, the best course of action is to... do nothing.

While paying Willy another $200,000 not to play the second half of the season sounds absurd, he is a valuable insurance policy when — for once — the sun is shining in Bomberville.

From where I sit, one of the few things that could derail this high-speed train right now would be losing Nichols to an injury without a proven alternative ready to take over in the huddle.

How "Bombers" would that be? After miserable years of losing, getting things right in 2016 only to blow it again by pinching pennies at the only position that really matters in the CFL.

I’ve been paying for fire insurance on my house for more than two decades. I’ve never had to make a claim, but I don’t regret a dime of it.

This is like that, with the only difference being the Bombers are paying a ridiculous price for their fire insurance.

Now, it is true the team is up against the salary cap right now, owing to Willy’s contract and an unprecedented free-agent spending spree last winter.

It is also true Nichols is earning more money with each start he makes, thanks to an incentive-laden contract that could end up paying him more than $200,000 by season’s end.

So what? If ever the Bombers were going to blow by the cap, I’d argue this is the season to do it.

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Let’s remember the Saskatchewan Roughriders used to routinely violate the cap and then pay a relatively paltry fine to the CFL.

They looked at it as the cost of winning in Regina.

As we’ve learned this season — again, thanks to the cheating Roughriders — the penalty for wilfully breaking the CFL’s rules is essentially a joke.

So pay Willy his money for the rest of this season. Pay Nichols, too. And pay the rest of the exciting lineup that finally has this long-suffering town feeling like a winner.

We’ve been refusing to spend in this town forever. And we’ve been losing forever. That’s not a coincidence.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @PaulWiecek