What else is there to say at this point? You’ll never be bored watching the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Just when you thought we’d seen it all lately, the Green and White found another unpredictable way to win a football game. This time they took down the defending Grey Cup champion Toronto Argonauts 39-32 thanks to a last-second kickoff return touchdown from Mario Alford.
Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ third win of the season.
The Good
If there’s one thing we can say about the Trevor Harris era in Saskatchewan, he’s never been afraid to use all of his receivers.
Some quarterbacks are guilty of focusing on their favourite targets week after week. That’s not something you can say about this Harris-led team. We saw it often last year, and it’s continuing this year.
In each of the Riders’ first three games of the season, three different receivers have picked up over 100 yards. Canadian Sam Emilus picked up 133 yards against Ottawa, KeeSean Johnson was good for 124 yards last week against Hamilton, and this week it was Dohnte Meyers who went off for 125 yards and two touchdowns.
While this team continues to have trouble putting teams away, especially on offence, it’s an encouraging sign when a number of receivers on your roster are capable of having a big game.
The Bad
Despite the score and the wild finish — which we’ll get to — this was a fairly ugly football game.
A big reason for it feeling a little sluggish at times was both teams taking an absurd number of penalties. Before anyone slags the officials, the vast majority of them were warranted.
In total, both the Riders and the Argos combined for 307 penalty yards — which is more yards than the Argos put up on offence on Friday night. For the Riders specifically, they finished the night with 18 penalties for 178 yards, including a number of bad ones that extended drives.
The worst example of both teams’ discipline came in the first quarter when Riders’ receiver Dhel Duncan-Busby and Argos’ defensive lineman Jordan Williams were flagged for a dirty illegal block and an unnecessary retaliatory roughing-the-passer call on consecutive plays.
We’ve seen penalties become a problem in Riderville before. Head coach Corey Mace already stopped practice during training camp once after he thought his team was being far too undisciplined in that regard.
Overall, Mace and his coaching staff were able to keep things under control after a few seasons of discipline troubles in Saskatchewan. Can they do it for a second year in a row? Rider fans better hope so, or a promising season could start to get dicey.
The Dumb
One of the beautiful parts of the CFL is that a relatively uneventful game can turn in a hurry, and that’s exactly what we saw on Friday night.
With 2:02 left on the clock, embattled kicker Brett Lauther came out for the Riders to attempt a 33-yard field goal. He missed it to the left, settling for a rouge to give the Riders a 32-24 lead.
That opened the door for Argos quarterback Nick Arbuckle to lead the Double Blue on an improbable nine-play, 55-yard touchdown drive, capped by a successful two-point conversion to tie the game up with 23 seconds to go.
It must be time for overtime, right? Think again! The Argos did the right thing on the following kick-off by kicking it deep to returner Mario Alford. While there may have been some thought to avoiding such a situation, we’ve seen far too many teams opt to kick it short or, even worse, squib kick when the opposition only needs a field goal or even a rouge to win the game. Anything that helps your opponent get closer to field goal range is a bad idea.
Unfortunately for the Argos, they were punished for doing the right thing as Alford housed the kick for a 99-yard touchdown, effectively icing the game for the Green and White.
Making matters worse for the home team? The Argos only had 11 men in the field. It’s impossible to know if a 12th player would have prevented Alford from scoring, but it couldn’t have hurt.
After years of being tormented by the 13th man in the Grey Cup, the Riders finally had a similar situation go their way — granted in far less important circumstances.
