Mitchell Blair
Saskatchewan Roughriders Head Coach Corey Chamblin has never been a man to make excuses and just days after watching his team get beat 18-10 in the Western Semi-Final to the Edmonton Eskimos, he wasn’t going to start.
There is a general consensus the season would have lasted longer and that a 10-8 record in the regular season would have been much better had it not been for the season-ending elbow injury suffered by Darian Durant in early September. While that loss sent the team swirling downwards, Chamblin would not use the event as an excuse as to why his team is going home for the season while four others are playing on.
“We’re standing here today and that’s the way fate dictates it,” a somber Chamblin said. “We just have to not look back and learn from the situation we put ourselves in. If we ever get in that situation again, we will answer it and get back to the winning side.”
While Chamblin could use the Durant injury as an excuse for what ultimately turned the season around, he refuses to instead deciding to search for positives.
“I don’t know how many teams could rebound from an injury to their starting quarterback.” Chamblin declared. “I told the guys they showed a true sign of character with the way they fought through everything. In the end, we lost a playoff game by eight points. They fought through a lot, but in the end they didn’t have enough to get over the hump.”
Before Chamblin starts to focus on 2015, he says he needs to take a good look at what has just transpired.
“The biggest thing right now is to look at ourselves and assess what we’ve just gone through.” Chamblin said. “We have to find out what caused us to go 3-6 in the second half of the season and why we lost in the playoffs. We need to look at that before we can decide on a game plan for next year.”
It is safe to say the 2015 edition will look quite different than the team that walked off the turf at Commonwealth Stadium. The reason for that is the team has 20 plus free agents to re-sign.
“Some will return and some won’t. Some will be our choice and some will be theirs.” Chamblin uttered. “Any time you don’t meet the ultimate goal, you have to make some change and that’s not a negative thing. You just have to find the right guys in the room to build for next year. We had guys in that room for this year and we saw the outcome. We’ll look at those free agents and we’ll look at players on other teams and see if they can be moved and if so for what and how they can help us. We will put a team together for the 2015 season though and it will be competitive. I have to look at all the things we did to come up short and like I said there’s a lot of work to be done and we will. There are things we need to address so that at the end of the year we are not eight points short in a playoff game and that we are playing for a championship.”
Chamblin has proven two things since becoming the Riders head coach. He isn’t making excuses and he isn’t resting when it comes to improving his football team. While the story did not play out the way the green and white wanted it to, Chamblin has already stated through his actions that he has put one book down and is ready to start writing another. One that will hopefully see the Riders back in the Grey Cup in 2015 and one that sees them taking home their 6th championship.
No one can predict what the off-season will look like and what players will stay and go, but one thing is for sure and that is Chamblin does not want to see a team whose season ends with an eight point loss. Excellence is everything and that should encourage members of the Rider Nation who are shaking their heads over how 2014 ended.
