Long after all the fans had left Mosaic Stadium for the second successive day, Logan Ferland wasn’t in any hurry to leave.
All because of an urgent quest for answers.
With that in mind, the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ starting centre used the first few hours after Saturday’s 24-10 CFL loss to the Calgary Stampeders to immerse himself in video.
“It told me the story of the game,” Ferland said on Wednesday.
“It told me what we needed to work on right away. It told me what I needed to work on personally, which was a lot, and how we can continue to get better and kind of regroup for the next day.”
The previous day, the Roughriders-Stampeders game — originally slated for a Friday night — had been rescheduled for Saturday afternoon due to unacceptably high air-quality levels.
After a long-awaited game ended at 4:59 p.m., Ferland remained at the stadium until around 8 o’clock in the evening.
“When you have a game like that, nothing is on my mind more than to see what happened and see how we can change it and how we can get better from it,” he said.
“I still watch it when I get home, but this one was a little different. I was in the building. It was an earlier game. I had tons of time.”
And no time for losing.
“We’re always hungry and we’re always ready to get better,” Ferland said. “We’re never scared of a challenge.
“We always look at each other and see how we can get better and how we can continue to push the envelope.”
That approach has been a spectacular success for Ferland, who earned All-Star CFL honours in 2024 in addition to being named the West Division’s Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman.
In that capacity, Ferland flew to Vancouver during Grey Cup Week for the 2024 CFL Awards presentations. Now he is preparing to head westward once again — for Saturday’s game against the host B.C. Lions.
He would much rather make the trip as part of a team, with the goal of returning as a member of the victorious side.
The Roughriders’ first four games of the 2025 season had ended with a victory. Then came the matchup with Calgary, which held Saskatchewan to 16 yards rushing. The Green and White entered the game with a league-best average of 138.5 rushing yards per game.
“We’ve got no stats (as offensive lineman), so we take great pride in that,” Ferland said. “Obviously, we need to get a lot better.”
Hence the extended film study.
“I take a lot of pride in being from here,” said Ferland, who hails from Melfort. “I’m lucky to be from this province and play for this province and I take that personally.
“Even if there’s certain situations that maybe won’t be my fault necessarily, I try to take that on myself to make it my fault and to take the onus so we can be better as a group.
“I hope it just trickles down to the rest and I think it does. We have a lot of hard-working guys and a lot of very selfless guys in the room and I think everyone else is very similar.”
