The Saskatchewan Roughriders dropped the final game of the regular season on Saturday night, losing 27-21 to the B.C. Lions. The result wasn’t as important as the health of the players coming out of the game, and from that standpoint, the Riders were largely successful.
Here are the rest of my thoughts on the final game of the regular season.
Rhythm of the night
The argument for the Riders starting everyone in this game is that it will keep them sharp and in rhythm with the playoffs approaching. In that sense, they did a really good job of that.
Trevor Harris and Kian Schaffer-Baker didn’t spend a lot of time on the field together this year, so to be able to work on that connection against a motivated defence was a fantastic bit of practice. Schaffer-Baker is going to be very important in the West Final and potentially beyond. Having a reliable target that can help you convert on second-and-six and keep a drive going is massive when it comes to winning playoff games in the CFL.
Then in the second half, with Jake Maier in, it was Ajou Ajou getting some much-needed reps in. Saskatchewan has been in “next man up” mode all season when it comes to the receiver room, but now it feels like they are going into the West Final as prepared as they have been all year. They are going to be difficult to defend for whoever has to come into Regina in a couple of weeks.
Trevor Harris: Elite dual-threat QB
The entire province of Saskatchewan had its heart rate spike when Trevor Harris scrambled in the second quarter. In a game where the main priority was having the starters stay healthy, seeing your 37-year-old quarterback go for a run probably wasn’t the plan. Even during Halloween season, that had to have been the scariest thing Corey Mace has seen in a long time.
Obviously, nothing bad happened, and Harris is smart enough not to take a big hit, so it ended up being a light-hearted moment in an otherwise inconsequential game. Still, Harris showed that he might have aged out of runs like that with the celebration after. Only people who hold a fake iPhone to their ear should be running, not people using their thumb and pinky. That is pocket passer behaviour.
Review the reviewer
If this game mattered at all, that review in the third quarter would’ve been one of the most frustrating moments of the season. If you missed it, Keon Hatcher was reaching for the endzone, got popped, and fumbled it off his own dome. Tevaughn Campbell picked the ball up and took it the length of the field for the TD. However, the play was called back because the whistle blew early, so instead of a TD, Saskatchewan had to go 107 yards, which indirectly led to another TD for the Lions.
To be fair, by the letter of the law, there isn’t a whole lot that the refs could have done on the review. It didn’t seem like the whistle slowed many players on the field down, but if it even throws one player off, you can certainly get the argument for calling it back.
The frustrating part is, why blow the whistle in the first place? In a video review world, we should be at a place where the officials know to just let the play happen and see how it works out. To take a TD off the board on what was essentially a technicality would have been infuriating in a game that had real consequences — although I’m sure the Stampeders weren’t exactly thrilled with how that played out. Hopefully, we don’t have to worry about that.
Mission accomplished
We’ve said for a couple of weeks that Saskatchewan needed to find a way to balance keeping everyone healthy with playing competitive football in preparation for the biggest game of the season. We won’t really know how well they did the latter until the West Final, but from what we can tell now, it seems the Riders walked that line very well.
Anyone who put on the green and white worked their tails off in this game and the one last week against Winnipeg. It’s been well-established that you don’t have to worry about Trevor Harris losing his competitive edge over the next couple of weeks, and he had a good rhythm going for the snaps he did play in this game. Plus, aside from the scare with Ajou late, it feels like Saskatchewan comes out of these two games relatively clean on the injury front.
Pick your poison
So, which team is the better matchup for Saskatchewan? Not that they get any say in the matter, but we know that it will either be the Lions or Stampeders heading into Mosaic Stadium for the West Final.
Looking at the season series, the choice certainly seems clear. Saskatchewan won two of the three with the Lions, with this game being the only loss. Meanwhile, Calgary curb-stomped Saskatchewan in both of their meetings this season.
Now, a lot has changed since most of those games. The two wins against B.C. came in July, and one of them was against Jeremiah Massoli. The two Calgary losses took place before the injury to Folarin Orimolade. Still, I said after the loss at McMahon that those games were going to stick with me all year, and I don’t know what could happen to give me confidence going into a third matchup with the Stamps. Even with the Orimolade injury, I still can’t get the Calgary dominance in those two games out of my head. Calgary manhandled Saskatchewan’s defensive line as well and did basically anything they wanted to against the Riders.
On the B.C. side, I feel the Riders stack up better against the Lions. The Lions allowed the fewest sacks in the league, but most of that is Rourke being a magician. I liked what I saw in this game from Saskatchewan’s reserves as they were able to stay disciplined in their pass rush and not give Rourke many lanes for those back-breaking runs. While there were big plays in the pass game in this matchup, with a fully healthy secondary, Saskatchewan should provide more resistance in the West Final.
Either way, it’s not going to be easy. It is either a matchup with a team that dominated the Riders twice or a game against a player who is almost guaranteed to be a finalist for Most Outstanding Player in the CFL this year.
Final Thoughts
I am just happy this game was 100x more enjoyable than the Winnipeg slog. The Riders now go from two games that didn’t matter at all to a game that means everything. I’d say they handled these two post-clinching matchups as well as they could, and they should be feeling confident no matter what lies ahead.
I’ve expressed a lot of frustration this season, but there is no way you can look back on and say it has been anything other than a success. Rider Nation hopes there are bigger successes to come, but this has to be well beyond even the most optimistic Rider fans’ expectations coming into the year.
Now, we enter the best time of year in the CFL: playoff time. Rider fans get a chance to sit back and enjoy Semi-Final Saturday carefree before the real stress begins as we approach November 8 and the West Final.
