Mitchell Blair
The Saskatchewan Roughriders and Winnipeg Blue Bombers will get to know each other well over the next few weeks as the teams will play three times in the next five weeks starting with a crucial battle at Investors Group Field in the Manitoba capital Thursday night.
The Bombers have been the surprise team of the CFL in 2014 as a four win team last season has already hit the win column five times this season. A big reason for the Bombers success is a guy who wore green and white for two seasons, but said he didn’t come north of the border to be a backup. When Drew Willy became a free agent at the end of the 2013 season, he no longer wanted to play second fiddle to Darian Durant and he knew Durant wasn’t going anywhere as did the Riders brass so they sent him to the Bombers in a trade that has definitely worked for them.
Riders head coach Corey Chamblin knows his unit will be in tough against a fired up Bombers squad. He credits a lot of their success to Willy’s play and says you can see the improvement when you look at what he is doing.
“Drew did a good job learning some things here. He’s a competitor.” Chamblin said. “I can remember in my office one day when he told me he would be a starting quarterback in this league. He is, and he’s doing a good job. He has the arm strength and he has the mental strength, so he’s a good quarterback at this point.’’
Darian Durant mentored Willy during his two seasons in green. As he goes into this game, he hopes he didn’t teach him do well.
“You have to start from scratch with a guy who is new to the league, so I just showed him the ropes and the things I looked at that made me successful as a young quarterback.” Durant said. “I’m not worried about job security or keeping information from him because at the end of the day I want to win. I didn’t keep anything from him because at the end of the day its about life and when you are good to people, hopefully karma comes back to you in a good way. The big difference now is he is facing our defensive line when the lights are on.”
Some are surprised at how Willy has performed in his first year in Winnipeg, but Durant isn’t.
“No I’m not,” Durant exclaimed. “He came in and won some clutch games for us last year so I know what he can do and so do the guys in that room. He knows what it takes to get the job done and our hands will be full in trying to stop him.”
There hasn’t been a lot of rest for the Riders as they have just barely recovered from Saturday’s win in Ottawa. Head coach Corey Chamblin doesn’t think that will be a factor, but what will be a factor is the crowd noise at the Bombers new stadium—noise that admittedly did take the team off its game last season when they paid their only visit of the season.
“We will be more prepared for what they will throw at us,” Chamblin said. “This will be an exciting game because their fanbase is really behind them now because they are winning. We are walking into a hornets nest, but we are looking forward to it.”
Kickoff is 6:30 Saskatchewan time with TV coverage on TSN. 620 CKRM—the official voice of the Saskatchewan Roughriders—will begin the longest, continous and most comprehensive game day coverage at 400 with “Roughrider Gameday” which can once again be seen live on Riderville.com. That leads into “Rider Nation Pregame” with Rod Pedersen and Carm Carteri at 5:30 followed by the play-by-play.
GAME NOTES:
- This is the first game between the two since 2007 in which both come into the contest having won the week before.
- The Riders have won their last two games by a combined score of 75-23, a margin of 52 points and back-to-back with at least a 24-point edge. The last time Saskatchewan won consecutive games by at least 24 points was in August-September 2006 when they ran off three wins by 31, 43 and 27 point margins
- The game features the two teams scoring the most points in the CFL this year as Winnipeg is averaging a league high 28 points a game while the Riders are number two at 26.8
- Rider running back Will Ford leads the CFL in touchdowns rushing as he has 5. Those 5 have come in just two games.
