Mitchell Blair
The Saskatchewan Roughriders have not had a seven game win streak since 1970, but they are in position to do that Sunday afternoon in Winnipeg as the two Western Division rivals get set to square off for the third and final time during the regular season.
The game comes a week after a hard-fought 35-30 win at Mosaic Stadium. Head Coach Corey Chamblin knows it will be a different type football game because both teams didn’t put all their cards on the table.
“Both sides will have one or two new wrinkles,” Chamblin said. “It’s pretty hard to get the players into it mentally if you go in with the same playbook when you play back-to-back games, especially when they think about what they did last time produced a win. On the other side, they think they have to change a lot to produce a win and that’s not true because they did some good things. It will be tough on both sides because both teams can out-coach and out-think themselves.”
During the win streak, the Rider defence had not given up 20 or more points until last week when Drew Willy and the Bombers managed to put 30 points on the board. Safety Tyron Brackenridge didn’t like that and was asked if Winnipeg was that good or if his unit just had an off week. He feels it was a combination of both.
“They’re a good team and they brought their “A” game last week. “Brackenridge said. “They have a good quarterback and a good group around them. They found some of our weaknesses last week, but we’ve looked at the film and we’ve seen some things. We know they will come with some new things, but so will we. I don’t know if we’ll see a game like last week, but it will be a close one again.”
Brackenridge also remembers what happened last year when the team went into Winnipeg. A 25-13 loss sent the team into a tailspin that saw them lose four straight. The Washington State grad says while that game and what happened is a thing of the past, they can learn from it.
“Last year is a thing of the past, but you can learn from the past, “Brackenridge admitted. “The last half of the season last year we went 3-6 and while we did win the Grey Cup, it wasn’t very pretty. We know we could have been better in the second half of the season and we want to be this year. We don’t want to go back down that road.”
Brackenridge adds complacency has not set in with this team. Riding a six game win streak, it wouldn’t be hard for a team to dial it down somewhat because of the success they are having. He says its tough to keep that mental focus, but staying with the same aggressive mindset is something that must be done each and every week.
“We had a bad taste in our mouth after that bye week, and you’ve seen how we’ve played after that.” Brackenridge said with an assertive tone. “It is tough to stay in the mode we’ve been, but we just dig deep and stay humble. If you want to continue to taste success, you have to continue to put the work in, week in and week out and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
While the defence gave up 30, the offence got rolling as they scored 35. Quarterback Darian Durant says having Weston Dressler back in the huddle has helped them achieve some success and he feels that having a week of practice under them should make things flow a little better this week.
“Just like I expected, he’s caught on very quickly and I think we should be seeing some big plays with him down the road.”
Durant is also looking forward to the back half of the home and home saying this is his favourite road trip of the year.
“We’re the bad guys this week,” Durant proclaimed. “It’s a hostile environment. I think it’s the loudest place in the league when we go on the road. They have some very vocal fans and their stadium keeps the noise in so it makes it challenging. They don’t like me over there, so its nice when you can have 30-thousand people rooting against you and you walk out of there with a win.”
A win on Sunday and the team will be in a spot where they have rarely been.
620 CKRM will have the radio call beginning at 1130 AM when Michael Ball brings you “Roughrider Gameday” live from the Four Seasons Sports Palace at 909 Arcola Avenue East. That show can also be seen on Riderville.com. That will be followed by Rod Pedersen and Carm Carteri with “Rider Nation Pregame” at 1 followed by the play-by-play. TSN will have television coverage.
GAME NOTES:
- In all 9 games this year, the Riders have had at least two sacks
- Since 2007, the Riders have won 13 of 16 games against Winnipeg
- Weston Dressler will play in his 100th career CFL game.
- Darian Durant is 167 yards away from surpassing Hall of Fame quarterback Russ Jackson as the #18 passer in CFL history when it comes to yards.
