Newsflash: The Saskatchewan Roughriders will not win the 2015 Grey Cup.
Although you may have had that suspicion for much of this ill-fated campaign, the Green & White were officially eliminated from the playoff race Friday night with a 30-15 loss to the Tiger-Cats at a sold out Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton.
It dropped the Riders to 2-13 and represented the earliest in a season they’ve been mathematically extinguished in my 17 seasons of calling Saskatchewan’s games on radio. There are still three games left to go.
So what’s next?
We’ll examine that in a minute.
But first, as far as Friday’s game went, it was another must-win game for the Roughriders and for a second straight week, they inexplicably came out flat. With Kevin Glenn as the team’s starting quarterback (just like the 46-20 loss in B.C. the week before), Saskatchewan trailed 20-0 at halftime and it was at that point Glenn was given the hook in favour of rookie Brett Smith.
Smith, the freshman from the University of Wyoming, showed some flashes and was able to put 15 points on the board (including long touchdown passes to Weston Dressler and Ryan Smith) that helped make the outcome respectable. However the loss went on the record of Glenn, but his interim head coach wouldn’t hang him out to dry.
“I think it was a combination of things. I won't put this on Kevin Glenn,” Dyce told 620 CKRM after the game. “There were a number of drops in the first half. There may have been some miscommunication and mislocated balls and when you do that against a defence like this you won't have success.”
“Offensively throughout the whole course of the game we didn't have much flow. Defensively we fought hard for the majority and special teams had that punt block, which led to our first touchdown. We talked about it before the game but some mental lapses bit us in the rear end.”
Unfortunately the Riders’ rear end has bite marks all over it at this point of the season, but there’s no point in rehashing the same old, same old right now. That can all be part of the year-end post mortem.
No, right now the Roughriders are busy formulating plans for their final three games of the regular season and they have the luxury of time on their side as they head into a bye this week.
Bob Dyce told reporters they have “two plans” for the rest of the season. One for the scenario of them remaining in postseason contention and the other for if/when they were mathematically eliminated. And the latter is where they sit now.
Interim General Manager Jeremy O’Day divulged on Friday’s pre-game show those two plans are “significantly different” and that they were just waiting for the right time to implement them. They didn’t want to indicate to the players they were “throwing in the towel” on the season.
