RIDERS FACE TOUGH TASK
Playoff spot a long shot
STILL THE SAME
The Roughriders gained two points for the victory, but they didn’t gain any ground on the Edmonton Eskimos in the West Division standings.
Although Saskatchewan improved its fifth-place record to 3-10, it remained six points back of the fourth-place Eskimos (6-7). Edmonton beat the B.C. Lions 27-23 on Friday.
“Of course you want help from others (when you’re chasing a team), but we had our chances to catch Edmonton in the two previous games earlier this year that we let slip away,” said Roughriders quarterback Darian Durant, whose squad is 1-2 against Edmonton (having lost 39-36 in overtime on July 8 and 33-25 on Aug. 26 before winning 26-23 on Sept. 18).
“Of course we’re going to need some help, but all we can do is what we can do and that’s try to win every game from here on out.”
The Roughriders are mathematically alive in the playoff hunt, but they need to have a strong finish and hope that either the Eskimos or Lions collapse down the stretch.
FLAG WAVING
In Durant’s mind, the Roughriders’ two-game winning streak indicates they’ve figured out many of the things that caused them to lose their previous seven games.
One of the main improvements pertains to penalties. Saskatchewan took only six penalties for 55 yards against Hamilton, including just two for 20 yards on offence.
“Sometimes you have to put on the film the day after the game and show guys the mistakes, the penalties and the hidden yardage that comes with those penalties and what that does in the long run,” Durant said.
“Once Coach (Chris Jones) broke that down for us, we saw how we were killing ourselves and we made up our minds that, if a team is going to beat us, it’s not going to be because of penalties. It’s going to be because they came out and just flat-out beat us.”
BYE BYE
Typically, many of the Roughriders’ players and coaches scatter across North America for the bye week.
Jones, however, was planning to stay in Regina and keep working.
With no practices scheduled until Oct. 3, Jones conceivably could spend less time concentrating on coaching and more time focusing on his duties as vicepresident of football operations. That’s not the plan.
“There might be a little bit more time here or there, but I’ll split my time evenly between the two,” Jones said. “I break my hours up in segments, 30 and 30, so I change gears about every 30 minutes.”
That said, Jones admitted the coaching staff already has done its game plan for Saskatchewan’s game Oct. 7 against the host Ottawa Redblacks.
All that’s left to do is watch film of Ottawa’s most-recent games.
ALSO ...
Durant and Tiger-Cats defensive end John Chick had a conversation at halftime Saturday, but there wasn’t anything nasty going on between the former teammates. Explained a grinning Durant: “He started jogging towards our locker-room, so I was just giving him a little bit about that.” ... The TigerCats were going to gamble on a third-and-inches in the fourth quarter, but they were penalized for illegal procedure after centre Mike Filer moved the football before the snap. The call caused a meltdown by Hamilton head coach Kent Austin, who then was flagged for objectionable conduct. Jones admitted he hadn’t seen the procedure call made before, but thinks it should be made more often. “It becomes more glaring when they only need about six inches and they move the ball up six inches,” he said. “Quite honestly, they shouldn’t be able to do that any time.” ... Jones celebrated his 49th birthday Sunday.