REGINA -- All through the Canadian Football League season, the Saskatchewan Roughriders have maintained a consistent message: take it game-by-game, focus on the present and do everything possible to improve each time they take the field.
The goal every step of the way has been to hit the top of their stride at the exact moment they need to be playing their best football -- first in the lead-up to the playoffs, and then even more so when the games become sudden death.
That stage begins now.
The Riders head into Saturday’s game against the Elks with the goal of not only rebounding from a tough loss prior to the bye week, but also with an eye to finding their best game in the final five contests of the regular season. And a commanding performance against Cody Fajardo and crew in Edmonton will be a positive step in that direction.
“This is the time of the year we’ve been talking about,” quarterback Trevor Harris said. “All year we’ve been building to be the team we need to be and there are always going to be times where you play a little bit better, play a little bit worse and take a step back, figuring out who you are and what you need to be."
“This final stretch is THE stretch.” Harris continued. “This is where we need to be playing our best football and trending toward who we want to be as a team, and I expect us to. I really like the genetic make-up of this club, the DNA of this team in terms of who they brought in and who we have as leaders. I think we’re in good shape, but it’s important for us to have good practices every day, because practice translates immediately into how we play.”
Part of reaching the peak at the perfect time is putting into practice all the adjustments the team has made along the way. It’s the culmination of a season filled with learning tendencies and trends, using what works and discarding what doesn’t.
Running back A.J. Ouellette has put that into practice as much as possible throughout the campaign, and that only ramps up as the games become more important.
“You're making your adjustments throughout the season, you're changing some footwork, some aiming points on certain plays,” he said. “Then by this backstretch, everything needs to be dialed in. You need to know your assignment without someone telling you what to do. No mental errors and make sure everything's moving as fast as possible. [That way] they can throw anything out there and we should be able to execute any of our plays.”
Ouellette knows exactly what it looks like when a team peaks at the right time and he has the Grey Cup ring to prove it after winning it all with the Toronto Argonauts in 2022. He’s also plenty aware of what things look like when it goes the other way, as was the case when the Argos went 16-2 the following season but lost in the East Division Final.
“The championship team I've been a part of, there were ups and downs throughout the whole year, we peaked at the end at the perfect time,” Ouellette, who saw the Argos go 11-7 in the regular season before defeating Montreal in the Division Final and Winnipeg in the 109th Grey Cup, said. “Then [next year] we had some issues and we let that kind of cancer in the locker room. I think this team won't let that happen, the leaders on the team won't let that happen, and I feel like we're going to keep ramping up.”
The Riders are the first to admit their most recent outing was a long way from where they want to be, a fact that puts extra emphasis on hitting their full stride down the final stretch.
“Football season is a bunch of one-week sprints and you want to make sure your body is in the proper shape to get through the times in the season when it’s a little clunky,” Harris said. “I think we went through a three or four game stretch where it was a bit clunky for us, not our best football. If we come out of that and we play our best football in the last five, it’ll be like the mile or a distance run when you try and sprint to the finish.”
Head coach Corey Mace is of much the same opinion and aims to make sure his troops are as prepared as possible for the final push.
“Every team is going to tell you they want to be playing their best ball going into the back end of the season and certainly we’re no different,” Mace said. “Are we close to the peak? I think the answer is no because the last game we played didn’t look anything like it. That’s the honest answer and now it’s up to us to see what it looks like going forward.
“The standard of who we are and how we approach things, we should always be climbing closer to that. You want it to align perfectly with the end of the season and going into the playoffs, but it’s easy to talk about that kind of stuff, we have to put it together each day.”
The Rider Broadcast Network has all the action on Saturday beginning with the pre-game show at 2 p.m. with Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk and Wes Cates. Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder have the game call at 5 p.m. on the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network.
