The good, the bad, and the dumb of the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ 31-24 loss to B.C.

Photo courtesy: Steven Chang/BC Lions.

After what seemed like basically a sure thing a few weeks ago, the Saskatchewan Roughriders are now in an uphill battle to host a playoff game at Mosaic Stadium this year.

Friday night’s 31-24 loss to the B.C. Lions not only made an already tight West Division even tighter, but it gave the Lions the season series over Saskatchewan. The Riders also don’t hold the tiebreaker over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Not having that edge over the teams you’re tight with in the standings is far from ideal.

The road to repeating as Grey Cup champions is getting tougher and tougher and starting to feel unlikely.

Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ sixth loss of the season.

The Good

There’s no questioning A.J. Ouellette’s value to this team at this point. The offence is just simply better when he’s in the lineup.

Ouellette returned from injury this week and you could immediately feel the difference that made for Marc Mueller and the offence.

The Ohio native rushed 19 times for 77 yards with one touchdown — not exactly an eye-popping stat line, but he was certainly effective and provided some needed balance for the offence.

Ouellette looked as healthy and effective as he has all season. We saw him initiate contact, and play his vintage big bruising style that the team hopes can be a difference-maker down the stretch and into the playoffs.

Perhaps more important than the rushing yards is Ouellette’s ability to block and be an every-down back. Quali Conley did a good job filling in for Ouellette but he isn’t the blocker that No. 45 is. Ouellette is another tool the Riders need on the field to help keep Harris upright and give him the time to go through his reads.

Ouellette may not find himself on the top of many stat sheets but he is arguably the Riders’ most valuable player.

The Bad

As much as the offence improved in comparison to their performance in the Banjo Bowl, it wasn’t enough.

Trevor Harris and company put up 383 yards of net offence and had a number of longer, well put together drives. The problem? They couldn’t finish.

The Riders made five trips to the red zone and only scored two touchdowns, and one of those touchdowns came late in the game. It wasn’t quite garbage time but it was pretty close.

In comparison, the Lions went four-for-five in the red zone.

That’s a pretty good recipe for losing a football game.

When you’re facing the Lions and they’re humming like they currently are, you know they’re going to score some points. Saskatchewan needed more from the offence on a night where their defence was going to be in tough and did a decent job overall, all things considered.

The Dumb

How much longer are we going to be subjected to TSN’s awful AI graphics packages? My guess is for as long as they continue to do games, but it would certainly be appreciated if they just stopped.

There are many reasons why they shouldn’t be using the technology, which is an issue for another website to write about, but ultimately they are just not good.

The package they rolled out for this game featured Tommy Stevens and Zander Horvath, who both could surpass Milt Stegall’s single-season touchdown record.

The package was clearly based on The Price is Right game known as Cliffhanger. If you ask anyone who’s a millennial or older, they will know about this game and will probably start yodelling like the song does on the show.

In this case, Stegall, Horvath, and Stevens were the ones climbing up the mountain. Well, sort of — they were running in one spot without moving.

It was frankly an insult to the inspiration. The yodelling was way off, and the game wasn’t played properly either.

I understand the actual yodel song is probably copyrighted, but the one selected wasn’t even close. Two-dimensional cutouts climbing up the mountain like in the actual game could have been made instead.

If you’re going to play off a classic, then you better get it right.