ROBSERVATIONS: “I don’t think one play by one person determines a football game” — wise words from a championship season

Post-game analysis provided by Trevor Harris was as sharp as his pinpoint passing.

After completing 32 of 39 passes for 355 yards and two touchdowns against the Montreal Alouettes at Mosaic Stadium on Friday, the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ quarterback reflected on the ebbs and flows that virtually every team experiences over the course of a CFL season.

“I won the Grey Cup twice and neither time I had a winning record,” Harris noted after a 27-24 victory by Montreal left Saskatchewan with a 5-4-1 record.

“You just get in the dance. That’s all that matters. Who was playing the best football last year at this time? Toronto. They didn’t win it.”

They didn’t even win a playoff game.

After going 16-2-0, Toronto played host to the East Division final and lost 38-17 to an 11-7-0 Montreal side that, at one point, was 6-7-0.

Montreal went on to post a 28-24 Grey Cup victory over the 14-4-0 Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Virtually forgotten by that point was the fact that the 2023 Argonauts had tied a CFL record for regular-season victories (16).

The only other 16-win team? The Edmonton gridders from 1989.

That year’s West Division final was supposed to be a cakewalk.

Saskatchewan entered the game at 9-9-0, only to engineer one of the most stunning upsets in CFL history and win 32-21 at Commonwealth Stadium.

For good measure, the Roughriders outlasted the 12-6-0 Hamilton Tiger-Cats and celebrated a 43-40 Grey Cup victory.

Fittingly, the final player to touch the football in that game was Roughriders safety Glen Suitor, who fielded a desperation boot by the Tiger-Cats and made a beeline for the sideline as the SkyDome clock read 0:00.

Suitor had also held the ball on Dave Ridgway’s game-winning field goal — a 35-yarder with two seconds left.

Earlier, Suitor had intercepted Tiger-Cats quarterback Mike Kerrigan. Edmonton’s Tracy Ham, who would soon be crowned the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player for 1989, had thrown a pick to Suitor in the West final.

Most memorably, a blitzing Suitor was a constant presence in the Edmonton background. Nobody had an answer for him.

Suitor had been lost for answers on Sept. 30, 1989, but nonetheless fielded every question after a 32-30 home-field loss to the B.C. Lions.

“What do you want me to say?” the sombre safety said while slumped in his stall.

On what was expected to be the final play, Lions quarterback Matt Dunigan threw a desperation pass in the direction of David Williams.

It didn’t even matter whether Williams caught the ball. All the Roughriders had to do was tackle him. Game over.

Well, not so fast.

Before the ball arrived, Suitor lunged at and prematurely felled Williams.

Pass interference.

“I just tried to time the jump,” Suitor explained afterwards, to anyone who would listen. “I knew the time was getting down. I didn’t know it expired when I jumped. I tried to play football. I tried to time my jump and make the play.”

Because a game cannot end on a penalty, the Lions were able to run one more play.

Scrimmaging the football from Saskatchewan’s 18-yard line, Dunigan looked toward Williams in the end zone.

Once again, flags flew.

Roughriders cornerback Albert Brown was called for pass interference.

The ball was placed on the one-yard line, whereupon Dunigan sneaked into Taylor Field’s north end zone for the game-winning major.

“That’s the toughest loss ever,” Head Coach John Gregory told the Regina Leader-Post. “I don’t know what else can happen to this football team.

“But I don’t think one play by one person determines a football game. The easiest thing to do is to point fingers after a loss and to start shuffling players.”

Suitor wondered whether “the easiest thing” was inevitable after the Roughriders (6-7-0) suffered their sixth loss in a span of eight games.

“After that B.C. game, I contemplated for a day whether or not that was it,” reflected Suitor, who met with Gregory the following morning.

“He said, ‘Pretty much everybody in this province wants me to cut you, or at least make sure I bench you for the rest of the way.’

“I said, ‘Coach, you might have to do that, and I deserve it. I understand.’ He said, ‘There’s no way I’m going to do that. You made a mistake. Other guys made mistakes in the game, too.’ ”

That was also a point the Roughriders accentuated on Friday night, after Brett Lauther had atypically missed four field-goal attempts — the last of which was a 48-yarder that, if successful, would have forced overtime.

Lauther, like Suitor, faced the media (and the music) after a nightmarish game.

Harris spoke sensibly, as always, and put the events of the past three hours in context.

“I think all three phases are going to be able to look inward and see that we all could have made a difference,” the Roughriders’ signal-caller said.

“We didn’t capitalize on certain little things. I know there’s a couple of plays, especially in the first half, that I would love to have back in terms of placement of the ball or a decision I made. Those things all come together at the end.

“There’s the play that everyone thinks may decide it or may not decide it, but we all need to look inward.

“Offensively, we could have easily sealed that game up. We had the ball in our hands with under three minutes left and the lead.

“We move the chains, we stay on the field, and we win. We didn’t do that.”

The key word being “we.”

Harris wasn’t glossing over a loss. He was putting it in perspective.

As the 38-year-old quarterback alluded to earlier, he was part of a 9-9-0 Toronto Argonauts team that won a championship in 2012.

Four years later, Harris shared in a Grey Cup celebration with the 8-9-1 Ottawa REDBLACKS, after they upended the 15-2-1 Calgary Stampeders.

Here we are in 2024 and Harris, having seen and experienced so much, is not deviating from his key messaging.

“These wristbands that I made the guys, one side says ‘Don’t Flinch’ because, no matter what the situation is — if you lost, if you’re up 20, if you’re down 20 — you never flinch,” he said. “You stick to the process. You stick to the plan. You buy in.

“The other side says ‘Build It.’ It doesn’t say ‘Place the House.’ It says ‘Build It.’ We’re building something special. That doesn’t mean that we’re a finished product right now. We’re building it, We’re just going to keep laying bricks down and, every day, just keep building.”

That point will also be hammered home by the coaches.

“We’re led by Corey Mace and our offence is led by Marc Mueller,” Harris said. “These guys are the A-1 professionals in terms of coaching and in terms of knowing what this team needs to do at the exact moment. We’ll address what we need to address, but we’ll turn the page.

“We’ve got great leadership. With Corey Mace as our head coach and Marc Mueller as our offensive co-ordinator, we’ll make the corrections. Then we’ll turn the page and move on.”

It doesn’t happen automatically.

You can’t wish away a night like Friday, or a winless streak that has reached four games (three losses, one tie).

“You can’t avoid it,” Mace stated. “It’s easy when it’s roses. We can talk about how much we love each other and all that other stuff, but when stuff hits the fan and it’s hard, it’s like a marriage.

“We’re about to see how much we really care for each other and how much we want to work for one another.

“We are who we are. This is who we’ve got. Nobody’s going to feel sorry for us. We have to band tighter and get our (butts) to work and find solutions, ASAP.

“The sky’s not falling, but we’ve got to get back to doing what we believe we do, and that’s playing winning football.

“That’s all we want to do — find ways to get better and play winning football, period, so we’ve got to band tighter.”

ROLL CREDITS …

• Nice people who deserve a plug: Brett Lauther, Mitch Picton, Suzanne Harris, Patty McCallum, Wayne Cunningham, Russell Hardman, Jesse Kindopp, Miles Brown, Harvey Kehler, Drake Douglas, Craig Smith, Cathy Smith, Brenda Edwards, Nick Jones, Jean Delance, Dohnte Meyers, Thomas Bertrand-Hudon, Sam Berg, Pete Paczko, Larry Kielo, Dr. Mark Anderson, Paul Anderson, Ian Hamilton, Carolyn Hamilton and Dr. Jen Johnston.