Two quotes. That’s all you need. Just two simple quotes.
As we embark on a brand new football season with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and finally put 2014 in the past, there are only two people we need to hear from.
The first comes from quarterback Darian Durant who was leading the Riders to a nearly franchise-best 8-2 start last year when he suffered a season-ending elbow injury in early September which sent the club into a tailspin. They went 2-7 the rest of the way including a distasteful first round playoff exit in Edmonton.
With nine months to recover, which included a strong showing in the team’s minicamp in Florida in April, Durant is now feeling 100%. He took to social media on the morning of Day 1 of 2015 Roughrider training camp in Saskatoon to reassure the antsy Rider Nation.
“So blessed to be able to be able to do what I love for a living,” Durant wrote from his Twitter account at @DarianDurant. “Still feel like a kid going into my 10th camp!!”
That’s music to our ears and Durant got the bulk of the work with the first team offense Sunday as he continues to test out his arm and get acclimated to new offensive coordinator Jacques Chapdelaine. He passed both with flying colours.
The other guy you need to hear from is head coach Corey Chamblin who enters his fourth season in charge on the Rider sidelines. Along with General Manager Brendan Taman, Chamblin was tireless in building a roster which he believes will be in the 2015 Grey Cup in Winnipeg in November.
“I think it’s different,” Chamblin said, referring to his roster makeup from one year ago. “I think in some areas we’re a little bit better and that’s just a part of coaching and personnel and different things. When we looked at it, we addressed different issues. Sometimes it’s not what we didn’t find, it was what was available. I think this year there was a different set of guys available to us.”
Chamblin’s talking about the pool of available free agents and veterans on the trade market which he carefully selected for his locker room. Grey Cup champions like receiver Jamel Richardson, middle linebacker Shea Emry, defensive end Alex Hall and defensive back Keenan McDougall were all added to bolster the lineup and provide the unteachable intangible of “knowing how to win”.
The club enters the 2015 CFL campaign with only one glaring question mark and it’s along the invaluable offensive line where games are often won and lost. Veteran centre Dominic Picard was cut loose this winter and star right tackle Ben Heenan was lost to the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts. Those are two important holes which the club is hoping to fill by unproven younger players.
However the backbone of the team starts with the head coach and ends with the quarterback. If you have two cornerstones in place in those spots, you’re in good shape. Down south, New England has the trusted tandem of Bellichick and Brady while Seattle has the solid pair of Carroll and Wilson. The good teams all do. Chamblin and Durant have the same credentials with championship rings along with Coach of the Year and MVP awards on their resumes.
The core is strong. Who knows how the 2014 season would have ended up had Durant stayed healthy? We’ll never know the answer to that and perhaps we can finally stop thinking about it.
No, the time for optimism is now. Here in early June everyone is tied for first-place and every team feels good about the club they’ve assembled.
Pretty soon we’ll board the always-entertaining roller coaster that is Roughrider season and I hope you’ll be along to follow the club’s fortunes every step of the way.
