Mitchell Blair
The Saskatchewan Roughriders enters a Sunday afternoon matchup against the Montreal Alouettes at Mosaic Stadium with a record of 1-11 with many of those losses coming by five or fewer points. It has been a frustrating season for the Green and White, but as the Riders approach their matchup with their Eastern conference opponents, quarterback Kevin Glenn won’t use the “F” word.
“I don’t like the word frustration.” Glenn proclaimed. “It gives too much power over us and I don’t believe anyone or anything should dictate the way you feel. The word I would use is puzzling. To do what we do is come out fast and put out good first halves and even a third quarter, but stumble in the 4th quarter is puzzling. If we had the answer to it, we probably wouldn’t be 1-11.”
Glenn realizes the team needs to put in a full 60 minutes to be successful, and he believes the team has worked on those little things to hopefully put in that 60 minute effort.
“If we’ve done any self-scouting, we’ve seen our second halves have not been as good as our first halves,” Glenn said. “A coach’s’ job is to simulate game situations in practice as much as possible so that is one thing we focused on this week, and I feel when you do those types of things they can only help us and not hurt us.”
While Glenn wants to use the word puzzling to describe what has happened this season, defensive lineman John Chick has another word for what has happened to this football team since the 2014 Banjo Bowl when Darian Durant suffered a season-ending elbow injury sending the organization into a tailspin it can’t control.
“It’s been maddening to see what has happened. “Chick stated. “You put the work in, you see the effort, you see a lot of things that are right and then you come up short. It is very tough and it is very disappointing because of a lot of us are putting our blood, sweat and tears out there and we aren’t getting rewarded for what we are doing leading up to the game. It is hard to put your finger on one thing, whether it be discipline, a bad break or something else, but it just seems there are a lot of games where a play here or a play there or a penalty at a bad time has resulted in us being on the short end.”
While the words maddening and puzzling are being thrown out there, it is not a word head coach Bob Dyce is using as his team gets set to take the field. Dyce says it has been very rewarding to see his team have the attitude they have had when one negative after another have hit them in the face since the season-opening game against Winnipeg.
“I can’t put into words how impressed I have been by this group of guys as to how mentally strong and resilient they have been.” Dyce admitted. “They have a strong belief in themselves and a strong belief in each other. You would think it would waver at some point, but each week they have come in with the right attitude. You would almost expect that to change as this season wears on them, but not one week have they ever been down on themselves. It is a huge positive going into next year because there are strong character people in this organization and that is needed if you are going to be successful.”
Sunday’s game will start at 2 o’clock with television coverage on TSN. 620 CKRM’s game-day coverage will start at 11 AM with that show being streamed live on Riderville.com starting at 11:30. Rod Pedersen will then get you caught up to date with any late breaking information on “Rider Nation Gameday” at 1 PM with Carm Carteri joining him for the play-by-play.
GAME NOTES:
- Rookie punter Ray Early is flirting with a Rider record for punting average in a single season. Early goes into today’s game with an average of 45.4 yards per punt with the record being 47.4 by Ken Clark in 1983
- John Chick is vying for the CFL sack lead as he goes into the week with 8 which is one off the league lead shared by Winnipeg’s Jabar Westerman and Calgary’s Charleston Hughes
- When the Rider defense has allowed 30 or more points this season, they are 0-9
Former Riders Tim McCray and Scott Schultz will be recognized at halftime after being inducted into the team’s Plaza of Honor on Friday night. McCray was a member of the 1989 Grey Cup winning team while Schultz was on the 2007
