‘We’ve got a championship DNA locker room’: Saskatchewan Roughriders unafraid of rust from meaningless month ahead

Photo courtesy: Saskatchewan Roughriders.

It’s a good problem to have, but can the Saskatchewan Roughriders keep the rust off for the 28 days between meaningful football games?

For the first time in 55 years, the Roughriders get weeks to burn after sewing up first place in the West Division. The Riders have finished first on three separate occasions since their franchise record-setting 14-2 season in 1970, but always had to play meaningful games to the very end and have never had the top spot clinched so early.

Meaningless games and rest-versus-rust discussions are not unique to the Riders or the Canadian Football League, but not in half a century have Saskatchewan fans looked at such an embarrassment of riches with so much time still left in the regular season.

The Riders’ next game is in Winnipeg on Friday, and then they are home to B.C. the following weekend to wrap up the regular season. Those games have big playoff implications for the other teams involved, but not for the Roughriders themselves. Still, starting quarterback Trevor Harris doesn’t want his head coach to sit him out completely.

“I’ll fight him. Make sure you guys tell him I said that,” Harris joked after the Riders’ first-place clinching win over the Argos in Week 19.

He isn’t worried about any time off hurting his offence before the West Final on November 8, either.

“No, we’ve got a championship DNA locker room and the guys are going to use the time wisely. But we have a game next week, so we’ll turn the page from this. We’ll be excited about this.”

For his part, head coach Corey Mace has lots of experience in these predicaments from his time playing and coaching with Calgary and Toronto. He was on teams that made it to six Grey Cups, winning three of them, and he’s unfazed about it all.

“I just think being in similar situations, in the past, there’s definitely lots of meaningful football left,” Mace said.

“In the games that we have remaining and how we attack practice each week, there’s a lot of stuff for us to work on and a lot of meaningful football. However we cook that up, be it through the week of practice and over to the game, it’s all going to be geared towards getting us where we need to get to come the West Final.”

The great Ron Lancaster once mused openly, with his Edmonton team in a dogfight for first in ‘96 and a bye week to end the regular season, about whether or not he could keep them crisp through a three-week lull in meaningful action. But just two years later, the little general also told his Hamilton players that bad things can happen in those extra meaningful games, so skipping some of them altogether wouldn’t be a bad idea.

The 2025 Roughriders have some serious injury problems, particularly in their defensive secondary, that still threaten to derail their Grey Cup plans. The sudden lack of immediate need for Tevaughn Campbell, Marcus Sayles or Rolan Milligan Jr. to contribute in the next three weeks is a major boon for a trio that is capable of almost single-handedly dashing the hopes of any visiting offensive coordinator in that upcoming West Final.

The last six times the Roughriders have finished first in the West — 2019, 2009, 1976, 1970, 1969 and 1968 — they have failed to win any meaningful hardware in the end. Regular-season achievements don’t carry any real weight on Grey Cup Sunday anyway.

However, in their first-ever championship win in 1966, finishing first to play the West Final at home after a week off nicely positioned Saskatchewan to win it all.

Since 1987, the team that hosts the West Final has gone a mediocre 19-18 in the big game, including the 1995 North Division when Calgary hosted Edmonton. That’s a very pedestrian record for teams enjoying home-field advantage coming off bye weeks.

At the same time, the Blue Bombers have won the West Final at home for the last four years in a row, in part due to a November style of football that includes a great run game and an even better defence. Today’s Roughrider bunch features many of those same traits.

For his part, Roughrider linebacker A.J. Allen, who had a career night with seven tackles, an interception, and a quarterback sack in that win over Toronto, doesn’t want too much time off that just might cool him down.

“I don’t want to get off the field,” Allen said. “I love this job and every snap is a blessing because you never know what’s going to be your last. You really never do. I try to take that mentality every play.”

“If you asked me, I would love to play every snap. But that’s not my decision. 
That’s Coach Mace’s decision. He’s my coach and I’ll follow him through a brick wall.”

There is no question that other Riders feel the same. The problem is, it isn’t a brick wall that awaits them over this final stretch.