Rare is the Saskatchewan Roughriders game in which there is an eerie, lingering silence not once, but twice, with mere minutes elapsing between devastation and defeat.
Even more infrequent is a scenario that incorporates the other extreme — pure pandemonium, with tens of thousands of fans celebrating what appeared for a few fleeting minutes to be a miracle finish.
Condense it all into just nine minutes of game time and you are left to somehow digest the most emotional of Saturdays at Mosaic Stadium, where the Calgary Stampeders posted a 33-31 CFL victory on Saturday night.
As is conventionally the case with the Roughriders of 2023, the game came down to the final play — a 50-yard field goal by Calgary’s Rene Paredes.
When he split the uprights, most of the attendees felt the impulse to split, period.
Just 42 seconds earlier, Brett Lauther’s convert of the most improbable of touchdowns had given Saskatchewan a 31-30 lead.
On third-and-24, Roughriders quarterback Mason Fine had looked deep down the left sideline for lanky receiver Tevin Jones. The Hail Mary pass caromed into the hands of Jones, who raced toward and across the goal line to complete a 69-yard eye-popper of a play.
It was the second touchdown pass in 123 seconds for Fine. For starters, he had found Jamal Morrow for a six-yard score after Calgary assumed what looked be an insurmountable 27-17 lead, considering the adverse circumstances the home side was encountering.
Fine was elevated to front-line duty because the Roughriders’ franchise quarterback, Trevor Harris, had been transported to the locker room on a cart after injuring his right leg six minutes into the fourth quarter.
Harris was hurt while fighting for first-down yardage on a second-and-17 scramble. He gamely gained all but a few inches of the required yardage, disregarding his personal safety in so doing.
“That’s Trevor,” Fine said. “He’s willing to sacrifice his body for the good of the team. You wish everyone had that character and those attributes.
“I hate to see (the injury). I’ll be praying for him. That just shows the man that Trevor is.”
That notion is the one that resonates as some time elapses and a game is placed in its proper perspective.
As defeats go, it was painful — excruciating, even — but the health and well-being of Harris should be the primary consideration.
“Everybody likes Trevor,” Head Coach Craig Dickenson said. “Trevor’s just one of everybody’s favourite people. He’s here all the time. He’s one of the hardest workers. We love his family and his boys.
“So when he got hurt, I think it did take a little air out of the balloon, but I felt we responded fairly well and gave our team a chance to win.
“I’m down about it now. Even in spite of losing, I’m more disappointed that Trevor may be hurt.”
There wasn’t any immediate word as to the nature and extent of the injury to Harris but, as Dickenson put it, “it did not look good on the field and I know he’s in a lot of pain.”
Such is the downside of a gruelling sport and, moreover, what we all attempt to process on nights like Saturday.
If we didn’t both love football, I wouldn’t be writing this column and you wouldn’t have made it to the 500-word mark.
Sitting here, in an otherwise deserted press box, I am overlooking a $278-million stadium that is a shrine to a great game, its participants, and its devotees.
On a night like Saturday, 28,842 people can gather for the purpose of being entertained while staunchly supporting a franchise that is synonymous with our province.
We are able to witness exciting, once-in-a-lifetime plays such as Fine to Jones on third-and-forever, or two Mario Alford punt-return touchdowns on the same night.
We are able to appreciate a consummate pro such as Roughriders middle linebacker Larry Dean, who registered his 500th career tackle as halftime loomed on Saturday.
Yet, we are also reminded that Dean suffered a serious injury on the very same turf, just two years ago, and missed an entire season.
He has returned to action, looking every bit like the three-time All-Star that he is, and we hold out hope that Harris and his family will enjoy a comparable outcome.
There is, however, the accompanying realization that professional sports can be cruel, and not even remotely fair.
One moment, you are watching and appreciating an exemplary individual as he approaches 30,000 career passing yards — a milestone that has been reached by only 18 quarterbacks in the long and storied history of Canadian professional football.
And then, just like that, it hurts to even look toward the field, the MaxTron or the TV monitors.
You don’t know where to turn, as your stomach turns.
You see Harris on a cart, acknowledging the crowd and dealing with a range of emotions that are unimaginable to those of us who view a paper cut or carpal tunnel as occupational hazards.
How, then, does one balance a love for the game — one that is a livelihood and a passion for so many people — and the physical and mental toll that is exacted?
“It’s tough,” Dickenson said within an hour of Paredes’ game-winning field goal. “A good night’s sleep always helps. I will try to get home and get a good night’s rest tonight, but it’s tough to see that.
“These guys play so hard and they sacrifice so much that you hate to see a guy go down. But it was an exciting game. We’ve got a team that shows a lot of heart and I think we’re going to be all right.
“But the general mood right now is we’re disappointed and we’re down, because we lost the game and also because we lost our leader.”
