As the regular season winds down the Saskatchewan Roughriders are hoping to get their offence in high gear.
The Riders are in the middle of the pack in the league in points per game with 19.6, tied with Hamilton for fifth. The only teams to score fewer points than the green and white on a per-game basis are the teams who are sitting on the outside looking in on the playoff picture.
“We’d like to score a little more, our goal is 27. Defensively we feel like if we can hold them to 17 that’s a good goal,” Dickenson said.
“We’re close to where we want to be on defence but we need to score a little more. Those points can come either through special teams or turnover for a touchdown, so we feel like another seven would be good on offence.”
Saskatchewan has only found the end zone eight times in their last six games. But, quarterback Cody Fajardo feels the Riders are close to boosting those numbers substantially.
“If you turn on the tape, and this is something coach [Jason] Maas and I did, we watched these games closely and looked at four or five different plays, if they go a completely different way we’re scoring 30-plus points,” Fajardo explained.
“You can’t get upset at the scoring getting a little bit lower, but if you would just execute on two, three, four more plays, it’s not like it’s 20 or 30 plays. It’s two, three, four different plays where you find a way to finish in the end zone you’re looking at 14 almost 21 more points, so for us to just completely say our offence is playing terribly that’s not the case.”
Aside from not finishing drives, the biggest criticism for this offence this season has been the lack of a deep passing attack. The Riders were able to hit on one deep pass in their Week 14 win over Edmonton when Fajardo connected with Duke Williams for 38 yards.
“It is nice to get a couple down the field and hopefully, it opens the flood gates for us,” Fajardo said.
“We’ve been working on it more in practice as the weeks have progressed. Also, having guys in the lineup that are new it’s always good to get throws up to them, watch them track balls, see what they like and I can tailor my throws to the way they like it.”
Saskatchewan (8-4) will hope their offence picks it up Saturday afternoon against Edmonton (2-9) at Mosaic Stadium.
