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Back when the ink was still drying on Mike O’Shea’s new contract, I asked the Blue Bombers head coach about loyalty.

Specifically, how loyalty can sometimes come back to bite a coach in the butt.

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He balked at the very notion. Wanted to know what the hell I was talking about.

So I explained how Wally Buono, one of the CFL’s all-time great coaches, often seemed to know when a player’s best-before date was arriving.

Buono would ride the man’s prime years, then cut him loose, preferably getting something in return, just before the inevitable decline came.

O’Shea nodded, took that information in without comment, and we proceeded.

The context of this conversation was his team’s prickly dilemma at quarterback.

Matt Nichols was a Mike O’Shea guy, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health. Had been ever since he took over from Drew Willy as the Bombers starter, five games into the 2016 CFL season.