It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
As of Sunday, the CFL’s West Division featured a gaggle of teams (four, to be exact) separated by a small number of points (four, to be exact) in a wild race for second place.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders (9-5-0) currently hold down second with 18 points, two more than the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (8-7-0) and four more than both the Edmonton Eskimos (7-7-0) and B.C. Lions (7-7-0). The first-place Calgary Stampeders sit atop the pile at 11-2-0.
Saskatchewan plays host to the Eskimos on Monday (2 p.m., CKRM, TSN) in a game that obviously has major playoff implications, especially after the Bombers (40-32 in overtime over the Ottawa Redblacks on Friday) and Lions (26-23 over the Toronto Argonauts on Saturday) already earned victories this weekend.
For the Roughriders, there’s nothing quite as invigorating as a playoff race involving a lot of entrants.
“It’s one of those deals where you’ve got to fend for yourself — and that’s good,” head coach-GM Chris Jones said Sunday. “It makes the games important.
“This is why you started playing football a long time ago and (why) you get into coaching is to be in football games exactly like this.”
The Roughriders have won six of their past seven games to take over second place while other teams stumbled. The Bombers, however, have righted the ship with three straight victories and the Lions have won four of their past five to get back into the race.
Edmonton, on the other hand, has gone 2-5-0 in its past seven outings to fall into the clutches of the other teams.
The stretch drive is well underway.
“It’s about making a statement and building your brand for the playoffs and building that foundation to come into a playoff game,” Roughriders linebacker Sam Eguavoen said. “Hopefully we get home-field advantage and just dominate a team.
“It starts now. It starts this week.”
Saskatchewan can’t clinch second place with a victory Monday — the victories by the Bombers and Lions saw to that — but the Roughriders can take another step toward that goal.
A win would give Saskatchewan a four-point lead over the Bombers with three games remaining on its regular-season slate, including a contest next Saturday in Winnipeg. But the Roughriders already have won the season series against Winnipeg, so they have that in their favour.
Saskatchewan defeated B.C. in their only previous meeting this season, so that two-game series is still up in the air. The Lions visit Mosaic Stadium on Oct. 27 in a contest that could wind up deciding matters.
If the Eskimos win Monday’s game, things will remain jumbled.
“I just realized that the last four games are against West teams and I’m like, ‘Man, who set up the schedule like that?’ ” said Roughriders offensive tackle Thaddeus Coleman, whose team also visits Calgary on Oct. 20.
“It’s hard not to look ahead, but you realize these last four games have a lot of meaning to them. We’ve got to come in ready and we’ve got to take care of business this last stretch.”
“In this stretch, everything counts,” defensive back Loucheiz Purifoy added. “People are fighting to stay in and people are fighting to secure spots. Right now, we’ve just got to keep our heads on straight and go win a game.”
The Eskimos won the teams’ previous meeting on Aug. 2, overcoming a 19-17 fourth-quarter deficit to prevail 26-19.
Edmonton improved to 5-2-0 with the victory, while Saskatchewan fell to 3-4-0. Since then, however, the teams have gone in different directions.
The Roughriders know the Eskimos will be a desperate crew on Monday — because that’s how Saskatchewan felt earlier this season after its own slow start.
“Edmonton is a good football team,” Jones said. “Early in the year, a lot of people projected them to be one of the best teams, if not the best team, in the league.
“They’ve got Mike Reilly at quarterback and you don’t need to look any further than that. They’ve got an outstanding organization and they’ve been used to winning. We’ve got our hands full.”
The Eskimos went into the week with the league lead in offensive touchdowns (42) and with an average of 316.2 yards passing per game, good for second in the CFL.
But Edmonton’s defence had allowed 35 offensive TDs and an average of 368.6 yards of net offence per game — numbers that were better only than Toronto and Montreal.
Saskatchewan, meanwhile, has been getting improved production from its offence in recent weeks (seven TDs in its past two games) while the defence entered the week ranked in the top three in such stats as two-and-outs forced (84, first), sacks (36, second) and net offence allowed (329.6 yards per game, third).
Even though the Roughriders are in pretty good shape when it comes to a playoff spot — as opposed to, say, a team that was 5-10-0 — they’re not going to take their collective foot off the gas.
“You’ve got to go from good to great and great to excellent,” Purifoy said. “If we drop our standard, that’s when we start showing weakness. Right now, we’ve got to keep up our standard and get stronger as we get closer to the playoffs.”
In Eguavoen’s mind, Saskatchewan also needs to send a message Monday.
“We’ve got a lot to prove because we could play Edmonton in the first round of the playoffs, so we’ve got to make a statement,” he said. “We can’t just sit back, slip up and win the game. We’ve got to make a statement and make them fear us for when we play them in four or five weeks.”
