Vultures circling in the skies over Rider Nation
Woe is Rider Nation. The Saskatchewan Roughriders are 0-6 with a listless defence and an offence reduced to third-string quarterbacks. If this was war, now would be a good time to think about surrendering.
In football, however, surrender is not an option. A negotiated ceasefire is likewise unavailable. The Riders cannot concede or throw in the towel or run away and live to fight another day. They are expected Saturday in Toronto to play the Argos. Including that game, they have 12 more this season. The horror. The horror.
Coach Corey Chamblin is standing on a trap door, in banana-peel loafers. Rumours of his imminent replacement are swirling. You go 0-6, you get the rumours. Foremost among them was that Chamblin had lost the confidence of Rider GM Brendan Taman. Winnipeg Free Press veteran football writer Gary Lawless reported that, according to an unnamed senior executive, Taman was recommending a coaching change to the team’s board of directors. Instead, Taman and the board president came out of their conclave solidly in support of Chamblin. Taman was almost reassuring. He reminded Rider Nation that Chamblin in 2013 was CFL coach of the year after leading the Riders to a Grey Cup win.
“He is the same guy I hired a few years back and I totally believe in him.”
That will suppress the rumours at least until Saturday, if the Riders look bad in Toronto. Not looking bad is the new standard. A win, with third-string quarterbacks running the offence, is too much to expect, going forward, as they say. When you hear “going forward,” it always means, please, let us not talk anymore about the regrettable past.
For the regrettable Rider defence to step up, for once, would help. Chamblin personally took over defensive coaching this season after letting go veteran defensive co-ordinator Richie Hall. Under Chamblin’s guidance, the defence has regressed. At times — when B.C. quarterback Travis Lulay got to the outside, seemingly at will, for instance, and coasted untouched for a game total of 105 yards — Saskatchewan’s defence has looked amateurish. Whatever confidence remains in Chamblin won’t last long if he can’t field a competent defence, at least. Only then can the ghost of Richie Hall finally be put to rest.
Defense should be Chamblin’s comfort zone. He was always a defensive guy, first as a player and then as coach. Before he came to Saskatchewan, he coached defensive backs in Hamilton and Calgary, where his aggressive crew shut down Andy Fantuz, who, until then, had been lighting it up for the Riders and was thereafter reduced from keeper to trader. Chamblin’s defence here looks more like it is coached by a neighbourhood dad. It is the kind of defence other teams love to play against. That’s where the fix has to start and no later than Saturday.
Even with an improved defence, the Riders still are in the soup. CFL teams do not, as a rule, win with third-string quarterbacks. Rider Nation cannot expect much from the offence, with starter Darian Durant gone for the season, at least, and able backup Kevin Glenn out for two or three more weeks, at best. Terrible luck is the problem here. With Durant and Glenn, the Riders had greater depth at this most vital of positions than any team in the league. That it wasn’t deep enough is not Chamblin’s fault, or Taman’s. When Durant snapped his Achilles tendon, Taman looked like a genius for signing Glenn. Those were the good old days, three weeks ago. Then Glenn tore his pectoral muscle and the genius Taman now looks up and sees vultures circling.
The vultures will not be breaking formation any time soon. From this depleted offence, now with a starting quarterback who tended bar last season, Rider Nation can ask no more than respectability. Turning the season around will have to wait until Glenn is back, no matter who is coaching the team. Until then, we will have to settle for drama instead of wins.
MY MISTAKE: I reported earlier this week that Saskatoon’s fire department bought six very cool new river rescue craft. In fact, the department tested six models but bought only one. This totally undoes my proposal for recreational rides over the weir.