The East Coast is proving unkind to the Saskatchewan Roughriders as they dropped their second straight Touchdown Atlantic game to the Toronto Argonauts.
Unlike last year, this time around the Riders basically were never in the game after giving up a big lead to the Boatmen early before eventually losing 31-13.
The game in Wolfville, Nova Scotia proved to be a pretty big turning point in the wrong direction for the Riders in 2022 and it certainly feels like a case of déjà vu in 2023.
Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ fourth loss of the season.
The Good
This game started just about as poorly as it could for the green and white and for a while I was wondering if there would be anything good to say.
In the end, the defence once again gave Rider fans something to hang their hat on.
After the first couple of drives, which saw the Argos’ rushing attack see some success, the defence did eventually settle in and managed to keep the Riders somewhat in the game. It seems like an odd thing to say about a team that was down 21-0 at the half but it’s hard to pin a special teams touchdown and an interception that set the Argos up at the Riders’ 26-yard line on the defence.
Take those 14 points off of the board and the Riders are in the game at the half. Instead, the game was more or less over baring something absurd.
In the end, Jason Shivers’ unit kept Argos’ quarterback Chad Kelly — currently the favourite to win the league’s Most Outstanding Player award — to just 122 yards passing, one touchdown and one interception.
After the opening quarter where the Argos picked up 13 points, they scored just 18 the rest of the game, including eight in the second and third quarters combined. Some of that probably had to do with the score at the time, especially the goose egg in the third quarter but Kelly never looked all that comfortable during the game.
Kelly will ultimately be fine but the Riders’ defence shutting him down is noteworthy.
The Bad
This week, there was a lot of talk coming from the Riders about how the kid gloves would be coming off for Mason Fine as they wanted him to push the ball down the field and to expect more from the offence.
Other than a few more throws downfield, nothing really felt all that different from Kelly Jeffrey’s offence.
A combination of interesting play calling, decisions from Fine, and honestly some bad luck led to the Riders not scoring a meaningful touchdown for the second straight game. Unlike last week against the B.C. Lions, they did eventually find the end zone when Jake Dolegala led a garbage-time drive that ended with a touchdown pass to Shawn Bane Jr., who was the lone bright spot for the Riders on offence as he racked up 144 yards along with that touchdown.
I’m not going to read much into that drive as the game was over but it’s certainly noticeable how much more zip Dolegala has on his throws compared to Fine. That isn’t the only thing that matters in a quarterback, obviously but, it is notable.
Fine finished the game with over 300 yards passing but all threw two interceptions. I’m not sure if he played better than he did against the Lions but I don’t know if it was that much worse either.
I probably would have pulled Fine for the second half because you can always go back to him down the road and given the other quarterbacks on the roster some meaningful reps.
What do the Riders do next week against Ottawa? I assume they go back to Fine, he probably deserves to play against a team that isn’t one of the best two teams in the league, like he did the last two weeks. However, I wouldn’t be all that upset to see them give Dolegala a chance too.
The Dumb
Unfortunately, this game didn’t offer much in the way of chaos or fun this game.
Neither team really attempted all that much, the Argos certainly didn’t have to. Nothing random happened. I do have lots of thoughts on the broadcast to come next week but I’ll save those thoughts.
Perhaps the entire game was summed up by a moment early on during a run by A.J. Ouellette when one of the microphones presumably picked up a Rider fan emphatically yelling “Oh no!” as Ouellette made Rider defenders miss and picked up a first down on a play that maybe shouldn’t have been one.
It felt a bit like a moment out of the Adam Sandler movie Waterboy without the “we suck again.”
