The Saskatchewan Roughriders are probably breathing a sigh of relief knowing they weren’t the first team to lose to the Edmonton Elks at Commonwealth Stadium in over 1,300 days.
The irony in the team’s 17-13 season-opening win on Sunday night is how the biggest play of the game was eerily similar to one from last fall, only the teams were reversed.
The Elks shut the door on the Riders on a second-half third-down gamble last year, which coincidentally occurred with the road team leading 17-13. Jones unleashed a Tiger Woods-sized fist pump that propelled the Elks to victory, which came in his first visit to Regina after leaving the city for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.
On Sunday, with just over six minutes remaining in the game, the Elks were first-and-goal on Saskatchewan’s one-yard-line and it seemed inevitable that the Riders’ four-point lead would disappear, pushing their new-look offence into panic mode for a comeback attempt in the dying moments.
Instead, the defence stood tall and stopped Edmonton’s short-yardage quarterback Kai Locksley not once, not twice, but thrice. The goal-line stand also chewed up a valuable two minutes, which aided the Riders in draining the clock to hold on for the victory.
“That was the play of the game. That was the series of the game, that goal-line stop,” said Dickenson postgame. “It was outstanding, the defence did a great job. (Defensive coordinator Jason) Shivers is an outstanding football coach, he’s got those guys playing hard and playing well.”
It was just another sliver of what is shaping up to be a delicious rivalry between Saskatchewan and Edmonton, especially if both teams are good this year, something that wasn’t the case last season when both missed the playoffs with losing records.
TSN’s cameras didn’t show any evidence of Riders’ head coach Craig Dickenson unleashing an epic fist pump on Sunday when his defence slammed the door but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, since you might recall that TSN didn’t show Chris Jones’ fist pump from last fall, either.
It wasn’t exactly Dickenson’s finest hour as he allowed his new star quarterback, Trevor Harris, to take a hellacious shot on the second-last play of the game and the coach has opened himself up to considerable criticism for his mistake.
Despite the clumsy finish, one has to think it felt awfully nice for the Roughriders’ sideline general to turn the tables against his old boss.
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