Saskatchewan Roughriders’ head coach Craig Dickenson doesn’t believe his team has played up or down to its level of competition so far this season because it’s too early to know which teams are good and which ones aren’t.
“I just think everybody wants to say who’s good and who’s bad as fast as they can so they can be the first one to say, ‘I told you so,’ but everybody’s kind of the same. I know Edmonton hasn’t won a game but they’re gonna win some and the teams that are winning a bunch of games, they’re gonna go through a slide and by the end of the year it’ll be [close] again,” Dickenson told the media in Regina.
“We’re just trying to play to our standard and our standard is high. We haven’t hit it yet and I don’t know if we ever will, but that’s the standard we try to play to.”
Saskatchewan is off to a 3-1 start this season, joining the B.C. Lions (4-1), Winnipeg Blue Bombers (4-1), and Toronto Argonauts (3-0) as teams with three or more wins on the year. Meanwhile, the Calgary Stampeders (1-3), Edmonton Elks (0-5), Hamilton Tiger-Cats (1-3), and Ottawa Redblacks (1-3) are multiple games below .500.
The Riders are coming off a 12-11 win over the Elks at Mosaic Stadium, which snapped their seven-game home losing streak. It wasn’t the club’s best outing of the season but upon review, Dickenson liked what he saw from his team more than he originally anticipated he would.
“Sometimes you’re down on your team and after watching the film, you realize, ‘Ah, we weren’t quite as bad as I thought’ and I think that was the case on the Edmonton game,” he said. “(We) watched the film, saw there were some things we could improve on and make it a better game for us and execute better on offence, but I thought Edmonton played well. Like I said, everybody’s competitive and there’s no easy games.”
Dickenson is hopeful that his team will be able to win games by wider margins as the season progresses for fear of inevitably losing a tight one. Saskatchewan has earned their three victories by a combined seven points and have a minus-10 point differential on the season despite their winning record.
Franchise quarterback Trevor Harris is glad to see the team has proved they can win close games, saying it’s the sign of a team that believes in one another.
“The team that can figure out how to win the tight games is often going to have the great record. We’ve seen Winnipeg over the last number of years, Toronto last year, they were winning the tight games,” said Harris. “The fact that we can win these tight games right now, that tells us who we’ve got in the locker room and the type of character we have.”
The Riders beat the Stampeders in double overtime at McMahon Stadium in Week 3 and are set to play their West Division foes again on Saturday, this time at home. The win marked Craig Dickenson’s first win over his brother, Stampeders’ head coach Dave Dickenson, since the West Semi-Final in 2021.
Calgary is off to a disappointing start to the season and gave up 23 unanswered points in a 24-11 loss to Winnipeg last week. Craig Dickenson is hopeful that his team’s offence will shine again after putting up a season-high 29 points against the Stamps earlier this season.
“It was our best game of the year on the offence. I thought we played really well, so we want to try to build off of that and then we want to try to anticipate what Calgary is going to do to move the football,” said Dickenson. “I know my brother well, he’s gonna do some different stuff this week so we’ll have to think about what they did the first game and what the spin offs are in terms of plays they might run in the second game.”
The Riders (3-1) are scheduled to host the Stampeders (1-3) on Saturday, July 15 with kickoff slated for 7:00 p.m. EDT.
