Rob Vanstone: “We didn’t uphold our end of the deal as a team” — a disappointed Dickenson
From a couple of perspectives, Saturday’s events at Mosaic Stadium unfolded as anticipated — that is to say, perfectly.
The pre-game tribute to George Reed, who had passed away six days earlier, was a reflection of the man himself — heartfelt and conducted with consummate class.
The presence of the 2013 Grey Cup-champion Saskatchewan Roughriders on Legends Night prompted a Mosaic Stadium crowd to respond in enthusiastic fashion, especially when Darian Durant was introduced. He received a standing ovation, as did the Reed family.
As for the football game …
“I did not see that coming at all,” Head Coach Craig Dickenson lamented after a 38-13 CFL loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
“I told the team, ‘I don’t have a lot of words for you, because never in a million years did I think we’d go out there with all the things that we have to play for — playoffs, honouring George Reed and his family, the ’13 team — and just the intrinsic motivation of going out there and doing what we love to do.’
“I just did not see that coming.”
But the Tiger-Cats kept on coming, amassing 546 yards of net offence and punting just once — with 10 minutes remaining.
“I’m very disappointed,” Dickenson said. “I’m embarrassed. I feel like that’s embarrassing when you lose like that at home when you’ve got so much to play for.
“I didn’t say a lot to them, but I did tell them that we’re going to come back and go to work, because that’s what we do.
“We get paid to work — win, lose or draw. Regardless of the performance and what happened out there, we get paid to come back and go to work.”
The effort will be directed toward Friday’s road game against the Calgary Stampeders, who need to defeat Saskatchewan to sustain their hopes of leapfrogging the Roughriders and claiming the West Division’s third and final playoff spot.
Despite a five-game losing streak that has left the Roughriders with a 6-10 record, they nonetheless have a four-point cushion on Calgary (4-11).
“We’ve lost our confidence and we’ve lost a little bit of our mojo,” Dickenson observed. “I don’t think it’s too late.
“Fortunately, we still have a chance, but if we don’t play better than that, you’ll be one-and-done even if you get in (the playoffs), and we don’t want to be one-and-done.
“So the goal is to find a way in these next six days. It’s a short week going into Calgary and they’ve had a bye, so it’s not going to get any easier for us.
“We’ve got to find a way to play for pride and play for each other and see if we can put a game together where we play in all three phases.”
The Roughriders seemed somewhat fazed by a first-quarter play that flipped the field.
Six minutes into a scoreless game, Hamilton was backed up to its 12-yard line and in a second-and-eight predicament.
Bo Levi Mitchell promptly found Tim White for an 88-yard pass-and-run explosion that was followed in short order by the game’s first touchdown — one that put Hamilton ahead for the duration.
“It’s deflating, because we’ve got the field position,” Dickenson said.
A stop on second-and-long would have likely resulted in a punt and excellent field position for the Roughriders.
Mitchell had other ideas.
“We got him pinned,” Dickenson said, “and then he just started moving the ball on these chunk plays.
“I think that affected our confidence on defence. There were some new faces out there that didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped, and I take responsibility for that. It might have been a little big for some of those guys.
“But that’s something that we’ve been talking about as a staff for a long time. Now we’ve got to keep it simple. We’ve got to do a good job of communicating in the back end.
“We made some mistakes and they made us pay for them.”
In the first quarter, for example, the Roughriders twice moved the football into field-goal range before losing yardage and being forced to punt.
With the ball on Hamilton’s 32-yard line, a third-and-one gamble was unsuccessful in the second quarter.
Two turnovers on downs, two lost fumbles and an interception complicated the challenge facing the Roughriders.
“We didn’t have a great start. We didn’t have a great middle. We didn’t have a great end,” Saskatchewan quarterback Jake Dolegala said in a comprehensive summation of the proceedings.
“It was just not a good showing whatsoever.”
Hence the blunt message from the Head Coach, who was far more critical than usual in his assessment of the team.
“Tough loss … probably the low point in my time here,” said Dickenson, who debuted as the Roughriders’ field boss in 2019 by guiding the team to a 13-5 slate and first place in the West.
“I’m just shocked by it and I don’t have a lot of things to say, other than we’re just going to roll up our sleeves and try to get back to work and find a way to try to win one game against Calgary.”
If there was a pleasing element to the program as a whole, it was the aforementioned salutes to Reed and the 2013 Roughriders.
“I was really touched by the pre-game tribute to George and seeing his family up there,” Dickenson said. “That’s special stuff.
“Win, lose or draw, that’s something that’s going to stick with me — seeing his family up there and seeing the way the crowd embraced his family, like they have since George came here as a player.
“Seeing the love that they gave back to Rider Nation, that was special. That was the one bright spot, I thought, in the evening — and seeing the ’13 team.
“So there’s some good that came out of tonight but, man, we didn’t uphold our end of the deal as a team and I feel embarrassed about that.”
