In week five I wrote that the Turbines get where they are going in small pieces and hand the last yard to Klaus Bombardo, and that the spring would price the one column he cannot control. The record has spent seven weeks arguing with me: through week six he had seven touchdowns on 262 receiving yards, and in the seven weeks since he has three on 429, because the club that used to throw him the last yard has started throwing him the field.
On the slate it was nine catches for 137 — his biggest afternoon since the final week of his first season — and the Turbines lost to the Toboggans anyway, 24-20 at home. The touchdown came on third and two, down fourteen in the fourth quarter, and the ball that used to travel a yard travelled thirty-two.
When the last throw was picked off, Bombardo got to Hollister at the numbers before any Toboggan could. Asked about the day, he said, “I'd give all of it back for the win.”
He is paid $0.7 million, twenty-ninth of thirty-two starters at the position, and the contract still ends in the spring. The Turbines are at the Roughnecks in week fourteen, five weeks from a market that has to decide which half of this season it believes.