What would you have done if someone had told you this past June that the 2014 Roughrider season would turn out this way: the quarterback with the best chance to lead Saskatchewan to two Grey Cup titles would be Kerry Joseph?
If someone had told me that, I'd have laughed in their face.
But that's exactly the scenario the Roughriders face as we plunge down the homestretch and into the playoffs.
Even the most casual of football observers across the province is aware the Riders signed 41-year-old Kerry Joseph last Thursday due to the severe right elbow injury to regular starting quarterback Darian Durant.
What we're going to try to do here is break this situation down and reveal it for what it truly is. Although things have been changing on a minute-by-minute pace over the past couple of weeks, I'll explain it for what it is today.
A few weeks ago, the Roughrider coaches steadfastly refused to bring in an older quarterback like Kerry Joseph, Steven Jyles, etc., even though its offence was languishing around the bottom of the league. As the story goes, the coaches wanted to go with young quarterbacks Tino Sunseri and Seth Doege.
It was an admirable notion. They felt there was no better way to get the two young guns experience and confidence than by playing them with live rounds.
Unfortunately for all involved, those two quarterbacks were shooting blanks. In late September in Edmonton, the Riders suffered their first shutout loss in 28 years, 24-0, to the Eskimos with Sunseri and Doege at the controls. A week later, Doege fired three interceptions on three straight series before being yanked for Sunseri in a 31-24 home loss to Calgary. Tino led a nice comeback, but didn't do enough to complete it and the Riders wound up with their third loss in four games.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnngggggg! Hello, is Kerry Joseph there?
Rider head coach Corey Chamblin is the one who made the call to Joseph, who was celebrating his 41st birthday on Saturday, Oct. 4 in Lousiana.
After 48 hours of weighing the pros and cons, Joseph chose a return to football and he was back in Green & White within days. This time he was wearing No. 5 as his old No. 4 now belongs to the face of the franchise, Darian Durant.
One more word on K-J before we move on to Durant. It's not like they had to call a nursing home to find Joseph. It was just 2013 when he last donned the pads, leading the Edmonton Eskimos to a win at Mosaic Stadium in the final game of the regular season. He was released by Edmonton in the off-season, but never filed his retirement papers, hoping an opportunity such as this would arise. And as recently as this summer, he was part of a coaching internship with New Orleans of the NFL. In training camp he beat all Saints quarterbacks in a throwing contest.
Now ideally, and Chamblin will agree with this, we'll never see Joseph start a game. They'd like to continue to go with the young arms, but they can't continue to let games slip away. They were making rookie mistakes and the Riders' mentality is we can't throw away a season when we have a team this good.
As for Durant, we've seen him only sporadically since he went down with a torn tendon in his right elbow on Sept. 7. He's on the sidelines during games and sometimes, like a gopher, pops his head out during practice to see how things are going. Sometimes he's wearing a lanky brace on that right elbow and sometimes he's not.
The team says Durant's on schedule with his recovery and will dress for the Riders' Week 18 game at Calgary and will be ready to play for Week 19 at home against Edmonton. Now it's up to Sunseri, Doege and Joseph to get the Riders to that point and hope Durant is healthy and strong enough to return to action.
Many are scoffing over the recovery time for Durant, saying it's too short of a period. However, I've seen the South Carolina product play with a broken foot, collapsed lung, bruised ribs and broken fingers over the years. This is nothing.
And he desperately wants to be the greatest Roughrider quarterback in history, leading the team to two Grey Cup championships, not Kerry Joseph.
However, right now no one is sure who it will be.
- For daily Rider news follow Rod on Twitter at @sportscage.
