The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ 2023 home opener will have a little extra drama after Trevor Harris was listed as a game-time decision, but the team’s new franchise quarterback remains confident in his ability to push through the pain.
Speaking to the media for the first time this week, Harris was vague about the nature of his injury but made no attempt to hide his desire to suit up for Friday’s matchup with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
“Honestly, if it’s up to me, I’m going to play,” the 37-year-old said. “I feel like I’m good enough right now, today, but I guess we’ll see what it is tomorrow and make sure that they’re good to go, make sure that they’re good with how it looks.”
Unfortunately for Harris, the decision will not be made by him alone. While the quarterback’s feelings will be taken into consideration, head coach Craig Dickenson was clear about whose call it will be.
“Ours, the clubs,” Dickenson told the media on Thursday. “But he’s going to be heavily involved because he knows his body better than we do. The training staff will have some input on it, he’s going to have a lot, and then I’ll have the final say.”
Harris sustained a hip injury on the final offensive play of Saskatchewan’s Week 1 win over the Edmonton Elks, a controversial play call that saw him take an unnecessary hit while attempting to burn clock. While he would not provide an official diagnosis, the quarterback was frank about what he experienced.
“I can’t tell on the film if it was an elbow or from when I fell, but I’ve broken ribs before and I can tell you that this is the only thing that’s been close to the pain I felt when I broke ribs and basically had a bruised lung from it,” Harris said. “When that happened, I was writhing in pain and that was close to how I felt.”
The discomfort has been consistent throughout the week, forcing the team to hold him out of practice and seriously re-evaluate his ability to play on Friday.
“Sunday night was pretty awful, like I could barely sleep. Monday night, same thing,” he explained. “Came in here Tuesday, didn’t feel great but as I moved around, started feeling a lot better. And then I went out on the field and threw a little bit and it didn’t feel good, and so we kind of backed off, just trying to be smart.”
Harris did not participate in a closed practice on Wednesday while receiving treatment and has been doing added work on the hip in his own time. While he took snaps as part of Thursday’s walkthrough, the Riders won’t make a decision about putting him on the field until he checks a few more boxes.
“I do what I’m told. I’ll get here tomorrow and I’ve got a list of four questions that I’m going to ask myself and as long as the answer to those are right and they told me I look alright, we’re gonna give it a go. But again, you never know until you wake up tomorrow and see how it feels,” Harris said.
“The main one is to make sure that I can protect myself and the next one is to make sure that I’m not putting the team in a compromised position. Those are the main two, the others are more just about certain sorts of feelings and mobility.”
If Harris is unable to go, backup Mason Fine will get the nod against Winnipeg. The 26-year-old started the final two games of last season, losing both to the Calgary Stampeders. Throwing a second-stringer into the fire against the league’s top defence is not the start to the 2023 campaign that the Riders were hoping for, but Dickenson remains positive.
“It’s not ideal, for sure, but football is a team game and we feel good about the room,” he said. “We certainly want Trevor out there. He’s our leader and he’s the straw that stirs the drink on offence, so we’re hopeful he’ll play, but football is a game of adversity and you’re gonna get it at some point in the season.”
Saskatchewan’s head coach was roundly criticized for allowing former starter Cody Fajardo to play through a serious knee injury in 2022, creating a season-long issue that limited his mobility and cost the team wins. The Riders’ offence never recovered and the team missed the playoffs, bringing an end to Fajardo’s tenure with the club.
This time around, Dickenson and his staff are taking a cautious approach. Harris revealed that multiple members of the organization had encouraged him to think long and hard about his readiness to play, advising him to ignore the magnitude of the matchup.
“It is something that people have asked me about. They’re like, ‘Don’t be stupid because it is the home opener and we know you want to go,'” he acknowledged. “But to me, it’s just about the maturity level of making sure that I’m not putting myself in a position to hurt myself further, that I can’t protect myself and then instead of it being a one-to-two week thing, make sure it’s not an eight-to-ten week thing.”
Despite the wait-and-see approach, Dickenson was glib when asked about his team’s injury situation. Harris will be handled with care, but he is not a long-term concern.
“The Trevor one, I’m not that worried about. It’s a hip pointer. He’s gonna be fine. I want him to play. I want him to play, for sure. But the ones you shake your head on are the ones that you lose a guy like Philip Blake for the whole season,” Dickenson said, referencing the torn pectoral suffered in the preseason by his projected starting left tackle.
“We lost an o-lineman in training camp for a while too; those are the ones that you feel bad about. But the nicks and bruises and stuff like that, it is what it is and we’ll get through that just fine.”
Despite the continuing discomfort he feels, Harris voiced a similar sentiment.
“It’s sucks but I’ve played through worse, so there’s that.”
The Riders (1-0) will kick off against the Bombers (1-0) at 9:00 p.m. EDT on Friday. They are currently point underdogs.
