Article content continued

There’s one more list O’Shea has recently passed Ritchie on, and unlike the others it’s not one to be particularly proud of.

The 48-year-old now owns more of The Drought than any other head coach.

Ritchie got five full seasons to end it, failed and got the pink slip in his sixth.

O’Shea is getting a sixth chance to slay the dragon, a beast now in its 29th year and growing snarlier as it ages.

With the team he has right now, though, he’s got a better chance to put it out of its misery than anyone since Ritchie in 2001.

You’ll remember that powerful squad rolled to a 14-4 regular-season mark, the last time the Big Blue won at the clip they’re winning now.

It all came apart under the dome at the Big-O, of course, and Ritchie’s squads never got that close to a Grey Cup again.

It would be another decade before a Winnipeg team re-claimed top spot in a division, but that was with a mediocre 10-8 mark in the weak-kneed East under Coach LaPo.

Friday’s grinder of a win over the Double-E gave O’Shea’s outfit a solid grip of bragging rights in the more hotly-contested West, albeit with the meat of the schedule still to come.

But after the way it prevailed in Edmonton, there are more than enough reasons to believe the West Final is destined for the ‘Peg on the 17th of November.

Everybody and their dog in Alberta knew second-string quarterback Chris Streveler was going to tuck the ball under those bulging biceps and take off with it, or else stuff it into the mitts of homegrown real-estate gobbler Andrew Harris.