The Saskatchewan Roughriders won half of their games in the first third of their regular-season schedule.
It’s not the equation the CFL’s Roughriders were after, but it’s what they have.
“Through our first six last year, we were 2-and-4,” defensive tackle Eddie Steele said after Saturday’s 34-22 loss to the Calgary Stampeders at Mosaic Stadium. “The fact that we’re 3-and-3 is not where we want to be, but it could be a lot worse.
“We’re not satisfied, but it could be worse. You’re always striving to get better. Are we happy with three losses? No. Do we know there were plays in those games where we didn’t help ourselves? Yeah. It goes both ways.”
The 2017 Roughriders lost their first two regular-season games and four of their first six before a three-game winning streak got them over the .500 mark. Saskatchewan finished the regular season with a 10-8-0 record.
The 2018 edition of the team won its opener, lost two straight and then won two in a row. The loss Saturday evened the Roughriders’ record.
“We’re still a work in progress,” Steele said. “Obviously we haven’t got to where we want to get to, but we’re not too far off. It’s a couple of adjustments here and a couple of plays there that we’ve got to make.
“The thing is, the plays are there to be made. It’s not like the opportunities aren’t presenting themselves. We’ve just got to capitalize. Honestly, we’re on the right track to where we want to be.”
The Roughriders have relied so far on their defence to keep them in games.
The unit has delivered for the most part, posting numbers that have the Roughriders in the top three in the CFL in statistical categories such as opponents’ offensive touchdowns, rushing yards per game and net offence per game.
On Saturday, Saskatchewan held the potent Calgary offence to only 12 first downs, 55 yards rushing and 227 yards of net offence. But the Stampeders took advantage of short fields created by turnovers and penalties as well as a punt return for a touchdown to build a 24-0 first-quarter lead.
Unlike Saskatchewan’s defence, the offensive unit has yet to hit its stride.
Zach Collaros, who was acquired in the off-season to be the starting quarterback, suff
ered a concussion in the second regular-season game and remains on the six-game injured list.
Backups Brandon Bridge and David Watford have tried to fill in, but the Roughriders have struggled with their consistency on offence. They’ve scored six offensive touchdowns this season, only two more than the defence has managed.
“We’re still finding ourselves on offence,” admitted tackle Thaddeus Coleman. “We’re still trying to get some kind of identity and we need to find it.”
Is that difficult to accept with one-third of the season already gone?
“Believe me, it’s tough,” Coleman replied. “I’ve been on really good teams and I’ve been on really bad teams and we’re in the middle. We’re trying to figure out what we want to be. Only time will tell. All we can do is keep practising and getting better and get ready for next week.”
The Roughriders are to visit the Edmonton Eskimos on Thursday. That will be the second of six consecutive games Saskatchewan is to play against West Division rivals, a stretch that could make or break its season.
The Roughriders believe the first six games they played — five of which were against teams from the East Division, followed by Saturday’s contest against Calgary — provided some building blocks for the next six.
“There have been positives, but there have been negatives too,” Coleman said. “We know what we can do. We’ve just got to execute better. We do it in practice all the time and we’ve got to bring it to the game.
“We show here and there that, ‘Oh, we can do this,’ and then we go backwards later on in the game. We’ve just got to be more consistent at what we do.”
Steele observed that the Roughriders shot themselves in the foot at inopportune times during the first third of the regular season. Penalties that snuffed out potential scoring drives or extended opponents’ possessions were costly, as were turnovers and mental errors.
Even so, Steele accentuated the positives from the first six games.
“The biggest thing is we haven’t played close to a full game of football yet, but we know in this locker room that we can play with every team in this league,” he said. “Hats off to Calgary — 6-and-0 and the best team so far in the league. But we spotted them 24 (points) and we made it a game.”
Defensive end Charleston Hughes noted that the Roughriders are “still mentally in it” despite their up-and-down start to the season. Like Steele, Hughes believes the tide will turn very soon.
“We’re going to get the pieces of the puzzle together,” he said, “and we’re going to figure out what we need to do to win.”
Head coach-GM Chris Jones is confident of that as well. In his mind, all that’s required is some added consistency.
“We’ve got a good football team; I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” he said. “If you polled most of the teams in the league, they know they’ve got to strap it up when they play us.
“Nobody’s going to be looking past us, I can assure you of that. We’re athletic. We’ve just got to become more consistent and we’ll win more football games.”
