Mitchell Blair
There was a reason why Toronto Argonauts quarterback Ricky Ray was named as the top player in the CFL in a poll done for TSN before the start of the season. The Toronto quarterback sliced and diced his way through a Saskatchewan defence that had been so good one week ago against Hamilton. He threw for over 400 yards and three touchdowns in leading the Argos to a one-sided 48-15 win on Saturday afternoon at Rogers Centre.
Riders Head Coach Corey Chamblin could only tip his hat towards the Toronto quarterback when it was done, but added his team helped a lot when it came to the success Ray had.
“We didn’t think the game would turn out this way,” he said. “But you have to be perfect to win against Ricky Ray. I felt we didn’t have a good practice and we were not good enough to win off a short week. They had an extra four days to prepare, but that’s football and we are certainly not using that as an excuse.”
Chamblin added the performance certainly knocked his team off the precipice and can serve as a motivator as the team heads down the road.
“Last week we were repeating, “Chamblin joked with 620 CKRM’s Carm Carteri. “If the truth be told, it’s a great learning experience. It humbles us and shows us a lot of things.”
Riders defensive lineman John Chick was chasing Ray all afternoon and says it was a complete 360 from the week before.
“We can make excuses about what happened, but the bottom line is they came out more ready than we did.” Chick said. “Its tough working on a short week for a variety of reasons, but at the end of the day that’s an excuse. We have to be mentally ready and I don’t think we were there today. We’ll come back home and sharpen up.”
Like Chamblin, Chick feels the end result could end up being a positive in the long run.
“Take the positive out of the negative and this will be something for us to look at and say just because we won big last week doesn’t mean a guaranteed win the next week” Chick preached. “ We have to keep our head on straight and play one week at a time and a loss like this will go a great ways to helping us out as the season rolls along.”
Taj Smith provided one of the highlights for the offense as he hauled in a 59 yard pass from Darian Durant as the team tried to fight off the canvas closing the deficit at one point in the second half to just 10 points. The receiver says it was a difficult afternoon.
“Very disappointing,” Smith told Carteri. “We struggled on offence, myself included. We couldn’t put it together. We put a run on in that second half, but we couldn’t sustain the momentum. Not having Chris (Getzlaf) in there was rough, he’s a big part of our offence, but we have guys here who need to step up and while some plays were made, we didn’t make enough of them.”
The Riders, now 1-1, will now come home to face the B.C. Lions. The Lions will be hungry to get a “W” after dropping their first two games of the season. Game time at Mosaic is 7:30.
GAME NOTES:
- After holding Hamilton to just 114 yards in net offence in Week 1, the Riders gave up 559 yards to the Argonauts
- The last time the Rider defence gave up 48 points was the 2010 season opener when they beat Montreal 51-48 in overtime
- Running back Anthony Allen has now caught a touchdown pass in each of his first two CFL games
- Durant threw for 295 yards in the loss putting him over the 23-thousand career yards mark in his 133rd game as a CFL quarterback
