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What … is … going … on?
The once mighty Saskatchewan Roughriders are the only winless team in the CFL following Friday night’s 35-32 overtime loss at the BC Lions. The Riders are 0-3 and falling behind the pack.
The last time the Roughriders were 0-3, Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister of Canada and Barack Obama was President of the United States!
What’s that you say? Oh, so it hasn’t been that long.
It was 2011 in fact, when the Greg Marshall-led Roughriders stumbled to a 1-7 mark leading to Ken Miller taking over the coaching reins just prior to Labour Day. The club would finish 5-13.
The 2011 season was considered to be a blip on the screen. A misnomer. As it turned out, the hierarchy was right because Corey Chamblin was brought in as head coach in 2012 and the club has pretty much improved every year since.
Until now. Time will tell whether this rocky start in 2015 is just another blip, or the start of a monumental franchise slide. Hey, the good times can’t last forever.
And Chamblin is getting tarred and feathered by a good chunk of the fickle Rider Nation these days, as he’s become the face of the organization. He’s made so many moves with players and coaches that it’s crystal clear the buck stops with him.
In 2013 he got the Grey Cup, the Coach of the Year Award and a fat, long, new contract.
Now fans are calling for his job, although any suggestion that’s on the line is ludicrous.
But it seems like this year is moving so fast, it’s like a blur. I’m sure the Riders would love to throw a challenge flag on the season just to have a moment to collect their thoughts. But they can’t.
The Riders’ offence has been far and away the most productive in 2015, but why hasn’t it translated in the win column?
What am I talking about? Well here’s how they got here:
Saskatchewan has held fourth quarter leads in all three of its games only to watch them dwindle into losses each gut-wrenching time.
Friday’s extra-time loss at BC was utterly flabbergasting and very likely left an emotional wound. Saskatchewan had an 11-point lead with 2:15 to go! Just play some defence and let’s get out of here.
Not so fast. The game came down to two third-and-one situations which sealed the Riders’ fate. On the first with less than a minute to go and the Riders leading 29-26, Saskatchewan turned the ball over on downs at their own 48-yard line when quarterback Brett Smith couldn’t convert on a sneak. The Lions took over and kicked a 56-yard field goal to tie the game and send it to overtime.
The Riders faced the same scenario in overtime at the BC 26-yard line and given the fact Chamblin couldn’t trust his offence to convert just moments earlier, he elected to have Paul McCallum kick a 33-yard field goal. After that, all BC had to do was score a touchdown to win. The Lions accomplished that feat alarmingly easily with a four-yard Emmanual Arceneaux touchdown reception to send the 23,062 in attendance into a frenzy.
The Riders fell to 0-3 and were appropriately shocked, stunned and bewildered. I’m told you could hear a pin drop in the locker room for quite a period of time afterwards.
Who’s to blame? The players backed – but failed to execute – the first third down gamble.
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Aggressive playcalls show confidence in your team. Better tackling would’ve cinched these victories in all three games, long before it came down to the final minutes or seconds.
You can scratch your head and point as many fingers as you’d like but all roads eventually lead back to Chamblin.
Now it’s up to the head coach to keep this locomotive on the tracks before they fall any further behind and their blossoming confidence is obliterated.
“We gotta find a way. Everybody else is,” Chamblin fumed on CKRM’s postgame show. “Clean football is what we have to play. Whether we call a three-, four-, or five-man rush, we just have to find a way to get off the field.”
The loss wasted a superb outing for star Rider receiver Weston Dressler (9 catches for 122 yards and two touchdowns), who says the Riders need to reach rock bottom soon before they can start climbing again.
“I think the biggest thing right now for us is recognizing the pain,” Dressler said in a silent locker room after the game. “It should hurt. We should have guys in the locker room that care about winning football games. I’d be worried if guys weren’t quiet in there and weren’t hurting.”
So again the Roughriders will try for their first win this Friday when they host those same BC Lions at Mosaic Stadium in Week 4.
Man these games are coming so fast.
(Rod Pedersen is the Voice of the Riders on the 620 CKRM Roughrider Radio Network)
