Whether he’ll admit it or not, you have to think Corey Mace wanted this one more than all the others.
In what was easily his most impressive win so far as head coach of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Mace outfoxed his old boss Ryan Dinwiddie in a 30-23 victory over the Toronto Argonauts on Thursday night.
After five years together in Calgary and Toronto combined, a span which included four Grey Cup appearances and two championships, the link between these two head coaches is undeniable.
After all, it was the Argonauts boss, then newly hired, who lured the fresh-faced assistant away from his wife’s hometown once upon a time, ditching a pretty sweet gig on the Calgary Stampeders’ staff to join Dinwiddie in Toronto.
“I love that dude. We shared that after the game (and) before the game”, Mace said after beating his old pal.
“It’s crazy. I know he’s upset. We would all be upset with losing, but I know deep down, from afar, he’s proud. We’ve spent a lot of time together but certainly, one day, sitting around having a beer on a patio, I’ll bring it up.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Saskatchewan didn’t have their franchise quarterback Trevor Harris or their prime-time receiver Shawn Bane Jr. For much of the game, they didn’t have their blind-side starting left tackle Trevor Reid either.
This wasn’t a game that the Roughriders really had to have either. After proving they are good enough to get fat off easy opponents like Edmonton and Hamilton to start the year, a six-game experiment to find out who Shea Patterson really is was a luxury the team could afford.
This is a fanbase that has grown used to being teased with a fast start, only to be let down at the first sign of trouble. The wait-and-see approach of Rider Nation was on full display with a copious amount of empty seats scattered throughout the upper deck of Mosaic Stadium.
But it’s a new era on the prairies and Mace’s men proved it on Thursday night.
It was Argos’ QB Cameron Duke and not the newbie Patterson who was intercepted four times. It was the Toronto receiving corps, not Saskatchewan’s, that couldn’t score any touchdowns. And it was the Argonauts’ offensive line that couldn’t give their quarterbacks enough time to throw, not the Roughriders’ patched-together front.
It was Mace’s defence dominating Dinwiddie’s quarterback and shutting down the great Ka’Deem Carey.
Who cares if Shea Patterson muddled his way through his first Rider start and couldn’t complete more than one pass for the first third of the game? He didn’t make any big mistakes and he let the brilliantly constructed defence win the game for them.
He let Rolan Milligan, Deontai Williams, Marcus Sayles, and the rest of the unit that piled up five turnovers be the stars and made sure not to screw it up. That’s really all anyone could’ve asked of this 27-year-old backup who is quickly running out of time to prove he’s a professional calibre quarterback.
And late, when Patterson needed to find somebody for a first down to kill the clock, he found Mitch Picton not once but twice. Rider fans found out they could indeed make hay with Shea when it mattered most.
Mace’s backup wasn’t spectacular but he sure outplayed Dinwiddie’s. Patterson, who has won games for some of the biggest schools in college football with Ole Miss and Michigan, even called this win the biggest of his career.
Ryan Dinwiddie has proven to be a mastermind of this great Canadian game, especially with his Kyle Shanahan-like plug-and-play success with no less than three different quarterbacks in his short time running the Argonauts. One loss in Regina doesn’t change that.
“A lot of things that we preach here are things that I’ve learned from R.D.,” said Mace.
“Who we are as a team are things that I’ve learned along my time and things that he’s learned along his time from great coaches that he played or coached with. Just tons of respect for him and that team.”
In this confrontation, it was Mace doing the teaching and Dinwiddie doing the learning.
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