The 2023 regular season is finally here as the Saskatchewan Roughriders rolled into Edmonton and picked up their first win of the season by a score of 17-13 over the Elks.
It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it rarely ever is in this early in the year. The opening week of the season is often basically a preseason game that counts in the standings.
We’re still a long way away from knowing who’s good and who isn’t this year in the CFL, but it’s always good to get the season off on the right foot and the Riders did just that.
Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ first win of the season.
The Good
While most of the talk during the off-season in Saskatchewan surrounded the team’s football operations department, coaching staff, and the offence, I think it’s fair to say the defence was looking for a fresh start this year as well.
Whether it was their fault or not, last year’s unit faded down the stretch, mostly due to the fact that they had to be on the field a lot more than they should been. The group likely wouldn’t accept that excuse, but it’s true.
This game sent one message loud and clear to the rest of the CFL: come prepared against the Roughriders’ defence.
What was most impressive about the outing from Jason Shivers’ crew wasn’t the fact that they kept Edmonton to only 14 points, seven of which came on a 102-yard touchdown pass to Geno Lewis. It also wasn’t that Edmonton converted only three second downs. It was the physicality and ferociousness shown by the defence, especially the secondary.
No one embodied that attitude more than new starting safety Jayden Dalke. The Leduc, Alta. native made his presence felt early with a thunderous hit on Lewis in the first quarter and again in the second half. Dalke finished the night with three tackles, an interception, and two special teams tackles.
The club’s physicality paid off again with what turned out to be a game-sealing goal line stand in the fourth quarter as Elks’ short-yardage quarterback Kai Locksley was stuffed on three separate rush attempts from the one-yard line.
If that is what we’re going to see out of the defence this year, then there might be good things to come. It’s also impressive that Saskatchewan took only five penalties for 37 yards on the night, which matches what head coach Craig Dickenson has said about wanting his team to be the league’s most physical and disciplined team.
The Bad
The easy thing to say here would be the offence didn’t look all that effective, producing only 17 points with quarterback Trevor Harris managing just 179 passing yards and getting picked off twice. The running game was also mostly ineffective until the team’s final offensive drive of the evening when Jamal Morrow came to life.
For now, I’ll hold off until we see a bit more from this group. It’s an entirely new offence from last year and to expect them to hit the ground running is a little too much to ask. If this is still what we’re seeing a few weeks from now, then it might be time to criticize.
What was particularly worrisome in this game was some of the decisions made by Dickenson and his staff.
Late in the first half, Dickenson called a timeout — something he hates doing in the first half — when his team didn’t have all of their personnel on the field for a final-minute punt. The team was right not to snap the ball a man short, especially on a punt, but it would have been more prudent to tell the players on the field to take the delay of game penalty to preserve the time out. In the end, it didn’t cost them, but it could have.
In the second half, Dickenson opted for an 11-yard field goal instead of going for it after a nine-play, 66-yard drive led the Riders to the two-yard line. Again, it wasn’t a decision that cost the team in the end, but you’d like to see more aggressiveness that close to the end zone, especially with an opponent that wasn’t able to move the ball consistently.
What ended up being the worst decision of the night was on the team’s final offensive play. Dickenson had a decision to make with eight seconds left: kick a 31-yard field goal or run around and kill as much clock as possible? Dickenson made the right decision to kill the clock, as a missed field goal could have allowed the Elks to return it for a touchdown.
The problem is that Harris was left out for the play and ended up taking an unnecessary hit that left him down and in pain for a while afterwards. Shea Patterson is on the roster to run short yardage and take those types of hits for Harris and should have been called upon to run the play. The Riders got lucky as it doesn’t appear Harris was seriously hurt.
The Dumb
You’re all probably expecting me to write about TSN’s segment on Trevor Harris getting players and media to pick their nicknames and I will, eventually. Stay tuned.
Instead, we’re going to talk about a new rule in the CFL. This year, any contact with an official will automatically be flagged. For the most part, I think we can all agree that the rule makes sense. However, there was one instance in this game where I think common sense should have applied.
In the first quarter, Elks’ defensive lineman Jake Ceresna was flagged for such a penalty after sacking Harris and accidentally rolling into head official Tim Kroeker, knocking him over. Kroeker was even seen with a smile on his face, clearly laughing about the incident.
After a brief delay, the flag came out as did my groan.
The rule is black and white for a reason, but Stampeders’ quarterback Jake Maier took some contact to the head this week, which is supposed to be an automatic penalty for roughing the passer. It wasn’t penalized. An Elks’ defender also rolled into a different official later in the game at the end of a play, which wasn’t flagged.
This whole incident felt against the spirit of the rule. Luckily, the odds of this happening again are probably pretty low, but you never know.
