For CFL fans watching across the country, the Saskatchewan Roughriders clinched the 112th Grey Cup with a remarkable fourth-quarter goal-line stand. For the two men who made the play happen, victory was assured at a much earlier date.
“May 9, the beginning of training camp,” cornerback Tevaughn Campbell said when asked when he realized the Riders were CFL champions. “I don’t think we ever had disbelief in ourselves that we weren’t gonna win.”
Much of the team stuck to cliched niceties as the champagne rained down in the locker room, saying that victory was never assured until the clock struck zero. Marcus Sayles took a different tack, echoing Campbell’s unique sentiment.
“Day 1 in camp, I already knew it,” he said. “I was here last year. I knew exactly what we had. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the job done last year, but shoot, we added some pieces, and we still believed from Day 1. We just said in our meeting — we had in our first PowerPoint slide — that at the end of the day, we was gonna be the 2025 112th Grey Cup champions. This is exactly what we had our eyes on the whole time. We just had to take it step by step.”
Campbell and Sayles combined for the biggest play in the Riders’ 25-17 victory over the Montreal Alouettes. Leading by eight with the three-minute warning approaching, Saskatchewan’s stout defence fell victim to a 51-yard bomb from Davis Alexander to Tyler Snead. A few plays later, the Als were in second-and-two from the three-yard line and sent out the jumbo package with short-yardage quarterback Shea Patterson.
A touchdown seemed inevitable, and a tie game could have followed, but Campbell stepped up to make contact with fullback Jacob Mason off the left side of the line, knocking him back into Patterson. The ball popped loose, and Sayles somehow found a way to get on top of it in the end zone.
“Do or die. All or nothing. Man, just full out,” Campbell said of his mentality on the play. “I just gave it my all. I couldn’t half-ass it. I just had to do everything possible to stop it.”
“It happened right in front of my eyes. I don’t know who hit it,” Sayles admitted. “At the end of the day, those are what we need. We need those turnovers. The Grey Cup is about them turnovers. You stop somebody on a goal line play on the one-yard line — man, that’s meant for us.”
The forced fumble and recovery were a highlight on a strong day for the Riders’ defence, which forced four turnovers, including three interceptions. Sayles recorded a pick on Montreal’s first offensive series, setting the tone for the rest of the game, while Campbell took one away in the third quarter.
The native of Scarborough, Ont., returned to the CFL this year after a six-year stint in the NFL. Despite scoring a pair of defensive touchdowns south of the border, he believes the goal-line stop was the best play of his career and a part of a much greater memory.
“Sorry for my language, but hell yeah. This is what I came here for. Man, I told you at the beginning of the season, I’m coming back to win a Grey Cup and, sh**, we’re here,” Campbell said.
“This is the greatest game I’ve played in my career. Just to be able to be on this stage at a Grey Cup and bring this cup home, bring it back to Sask — man, it’s an amazing feeling.”
After learning that it was Campbell who forced the ball out of Patterson’s arms, Sayles was effusive in his praise.
“That’s my brother for that, to the end of this world. I love my dog. He’s right here in front of me, too, so I get emotional,” he said.
“We’ve bounced so many ideas off each other. He was doing that in the NFL, and y’all saw all the plays he made. When he came in, he was an instant bonus to this team. We couldn’t have done anything without him.”
Following the goal-line stand, the Riders marched down the field for a field goal attempt, which sailed wide right. It wouldn’t matter, as a discombobulated Alouettes team struggled on a chaotic final drive, committing multiple penalties and netting just 38 yards in their pursuit of an equalizer.
“Dogs, that’s it. A bunch of dogs,” Campbell said of the defence. “You see the front line rushing the quarterback, from the linebackers making plays on the field, to the DBs taking the ball out of the air — a bunch of dogs.”
Fittingly, it was Campbell who made the game’s last tackle and Sayles who batted away Alexander’s final Hail Mary heave. When that ball fell to the turf, it simply confirmed what they both already knew.
