SASKATOON -- Saskatchewan Roughriders linebacker Nick Wiebe is hoping to finally catch a bit of luck on the injury front this season.
And as any onlooker of the Canadian Football League team can tell you, it’s more than overdue.
Wiebe suffered a torn ACL in his final game with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies in 2023, it took 10 months of rehab and recovery for him to return to the field with the Riders.
Unfortunately, that return -- in Week 14 last season against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers -- didn’t last long, he re-aggravated the injury and ended up missing the remainder of the season.
Now, he’s back at training camp doing his thing and if everything goes according to plan, Wiebe will find himself on the roster when things get going for real in a few weeks time.
“Going into film, it's a little different than last year, watching other people play on the tape and now I get to watch myself play a little bit,” Wiebe said during a post-practice conversation with the voice of the Roughriders, Dave Thomas.
“It's been exciting, honestly. I think my family, everybody's super excited. Everybody who helped me through the darker days of the rehab process, I'm excited to celebrate with them at the end of the year when we get that Grey Cup.”
The good news is that even with the rigours of training camp, it’s been all systems go for Wiebe from the start. The team is taking a cautious approach, making sure that things don’t get pushed too far, too fast and something bad happens, but that approach is one the six-foot-three, 240-pound Calgary native realizes is all part of the process.
“I appreciate them being patient with me and making sure we don't have another incident like last year where the retweak happens and you got to sit a while,” Wiebe said. “I appreciate them taking it slow, but I feel awesome flying around -- feel fast. The playbook is coming a little faster than last year since I've been around. The whole room has done a really good job taking the young guys under their wing and making sure we know what we're doing."
That’s one of the most important parts of the return thus far -- rekindling his enjoyment of the game that had been missing for the better part of 18 months.
“I tell my mom and dad this all the time, you forget how much fun football is until you get back into it and start having fun on the field again,” Wiebe said. “That's been an awesome realization for me at this camp, getting back into it and realizing how much fun I have out there again. I'm back at it and it's so much fun to get out there and fly around.”
One thing that wasn’t fun, at all, was having to sit on the sidelines and watch other players “basically living your dream” almost the entirety of last season.
“You get drafted to come play football here, you don't get drafted to come run up and down the sidelines and dance,” Wiebe said. “It was a killer, but I tell people this all the time, I wouldn't change it for the world. It made me the better man that I am today. I feel like my emotional resiliency is at a different level than it was prior to the injury.”
An aspect that is always a question for a rookie player trying to break into the pro game is how they’re adjusting to the far more complex and intense play-calling. When he wasn’t on the field in 2024, Wiebe was still doing his homework and his familiarity with the playbook is now at the level where he’s “super comfortable” with any situation he’s put in.
“They made it super easy on us to learn it,” Wiebe said. “And everyone was learning at the same time last year because it was Coach Mace's first year and the defence was new to everybody at the time. “But now that we have it and we've been through it one year, we're working on the little stuff. It's less the broad concepts of the defence that we're working on, it's more fine-tuning the little stuff.”
Be sure to keep an eye on Sportscage.com and listen to CKRM every afternoon for regular updates from Roughriders training camp.
