Neither played particularly well. I fully understand your rationale. I don't buy it though in this instance. The Elks D was laying down and the Bombers O was on from the start of the game. Bombers were playing one of their sending a message games, at home, and them being giants at home is indisputable. Its not even possible to argue this not being the case. Bombers are dominant at home and have been for several seasons.
The Elks stopped nothing all day. Like I'd mentioned earlier nearly every Bombers pass was completed. Elks all game broke up only one or two passes. that is abysmal. The other 3 were Colloras throwing the ball away. The runstop wasn't there either.
Lets break it down into detail. The Bombers scored TD on opening drive. They were 10 up mins into the game and then 17pts up at 13mins. To that point the Elks offense had the ball only twice and with one of those Elks possessions ending on a Prukop failed gamble. So the game was over right there. I encourage you to consider that.
Conversely the Elks O was not on aside from Rankin, and that includes the receivers. Several flat out dropped balls in first half and that just kills momentum. Some bad reads by MBT as well or not getting it away fast enough but this was not an A game from our receivers and I didn't like the new one we had in there either, I forget his name. Lewis was finally embarassed into action by Lawler making spectacular grabs. It was an uninspiring effort from most of the offense. We were losing the line of scrimmage as well. Almost always.
Fords wins in some cases occurred against teams that were playing poorly at the time. Theres flux in any team at different times. Especially in CFL where teams run hot and cold quite a lot.
That's kind of my point and going from the point you mention here, the next five series go
Elks - 2 and out off a 4 yard run and an incomplete pass
Bombers - March down the field and score again.
Elks - 2 and out with a negative 1 yard pass and incomplete pass.
Bombers - 2 and out on the first stop of the game by the defense.
Elks - a run, a short pass giveing a First Down. Followed by a run, then the failed lateral pass resulting in a quick 7 points against and a 31-0 deficit.
A couple first downs and some points on one of those 3 Elks drives instead of the offense giving up a quick 7 points maybe galvanizes the team and they make a game of it. As it were the defense made some other stops to finish out the half.
Scoring a touchdown instead of giving up a touchdown in that stretch, the score could potentially be 27-13 with the Elks feeling like they got bailed out of a bad start against a great team at home with the Bombers feeling like they let a team off the mat. Throw in that first drive of the third and all of the sudden it's a one score game.
But instead it's 34-6, they can only feel like they got their asses kicked and Winnipeg can look at it as if they just need to play tidy, limit big plays and give up no turnovers and the game is in the bag.
Would they have completed a comeback in this alternate universe. I really doubt it, as Winnipeg is firing on all cylinders now, but it would be easier to feel better about the team and MBT if they had made a game of it at any real point.