The Saskatchewan Roughriders believe they’re a different team now than the one that faced the Calgary Stampeders earlier this CFL season.
The Roughriders are hoping that improvement leads to a different result when they play host to the Stampeders on Sunday (2 p.m., CKRM, TSN).
Saskatchewan lost 27-10 in Calgary on July 22, a defeat that dropped the Roughriders’ record to 1-3-0. But they’ve since gone 5-2-0, with four of those wins coming in their past five games.
“We’re more confident now,” defensive lineman Ese Mrabure said. “We’re having fun while we’re playing. We’re all doing our own jobs and not trying to do too much. The cohesiveness of the team has formed and has been molded and solidified.
“Defensively, everybody’s flooding to the ball. We’re making plays, we’re excited for each other — and we’re winning. It’s definitely showing that we’re a different team from earlier in the season.”
Saskatchewan lost its first two regular-season games before beating the visiting Hamilton Tiger-Cats 37-20 on July 8. The Roughriders then went into their first bye week of the season, confident that the momentum derived from that victory would carry over into the game in Calgary.
It didn’t.
The Stampeders led 17-0 after the first half, during which they owned a 15-3 edge in first downs and a 272-34 advantage in net yards. Tailback Jerome Messam rushed 17 times for 96 yards in the opening 30 minutes and the Calgary defence sacked Saskatchewan quarterback Kevin Glenn five times before the intermission.
“That game definitely opened some eyes,” Mrabure said. “It made us realize how much we had been beating ourselves — and that’s not to take away from any of the other teams in the league.
“As we went over the film, we noticed that we were beating ourselves more than anything. Once we figured out that we have to have confidence in what we’re doing and trust in what (head coach) Chris Jones is calling (on defence), the confidence just came in waves.”
Centre Brendon LaBatte also can see a difference in the Roughriders’ level of self-assurance. But he’s not altogether convinced that that explains the team’s recent turnaround.
“As older guys, I don’t know if you sway quite as much with that,” LaBatte said. “Maybe for the younger guys it’s a little easier to buy in when you have that confidence in the guys around you, but I don’t know if that’s a huge deal for us.
“The game’s different if you’re either in the ball game or you’re ahead in the ball game. We put ourselves in a pretty big hole right out of the gate (in Calgary). If you do that against a good team, you’re going to have a long day …
“To me, the biggest change is that we’re putting ourselves in better situations. We’re not down 14 or 20 points in the first quarter trying to play from behind.”
Since the loss in Calgary, the Roughriders have outscored teams 66-26 in first quarters and 146-96 in first halves.
The disparity is even greater over the past five games, during which the Roughriders have outscored their opponents 63-10 in first quarters and 129-61 in first halves.
But the Stampeders aren’t exactly slouches in that area. During their eight-game winning streak, they have outscored teams 59-11 in first quarters and 152-45 in first halves.
“They play out front a lot,” Jones said. “They’re usually 10 points up, so it’s a little bit easier for them to sit back and do some of those things that they do (on defence) …
“It’s going to be a test whether we can sit there and make those same plays over and over and over (and) whether we can establish the run. It’s going to be very interesting to see exactly where we stack up.”
Actually, the Roughriders haven’t stacked up well with the Stampeders in recent seasons.
Calgary has won nine straight regular-season games against the Roughriders — Saskatchewan’s last regular-season victory was a 36-21 home-field decision on July 5, 2013 — and is 15-2 against the Green and White since the start of the 2011 season.
“Their biggest strength is their consistency: They show up week in and week out and do the same things over and over and over,” Jones said of the Stampeders. “I liken it a lot of times to basketball (and) a guy who can dribble with both hands, shoot free throws and make left-handed layups. That’s what they do.”
Calgary is riding a 15-game winning streak against West Division rivals. That string includes seven straight road wins, three of which were in Regina.
The Roughriders know what they’re facing Sunday — and they say they’re ready for it.
“They’ve been winning a lot of games and they’ve been winning in all different types of fashion,” Glenn said. “I don’t think I’ve watched a game of theirs where it was the exact same win every time. They’ve come back, they’ve been up, they’ve been down, they’ve rallied, they did it on defence, offence, special teams.
“The fact that we’ve been able to do some of that too against certain teams will help us when we face them.”
