The wind that blew through Montreal’s Percival Molson Stadium must have come from Mosaic Stadium, as the Bombers clinching first in the West let all of the air out of the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ balloon on Saturday night.
A game that could have given the Riders a chance at hosting the West Final suddenly became the team’s third preseason game in front of an announced crowd of 22,709 and it showed. Saskatchewan looked flat from the start and never found any rhythm in a 27-12 loss to the last-place Calgary Stampeders.
The team’s attention now turns to hosting the West Semi-Final next weekend against the B.C. Lions.
Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ regular-season finale.
The Good
Without much to play for, the one good thing to come from this game was that head coach Corey Mace and the rest of the front office were able to get a good long look at third-string quarterback Jack Coan.
The former Notre Dame Fighting Irish pivot entered the game with under two minutes to go in the opening half, giving backup quarterback Shea Patterson the rest of the evening off. It’s difficult to draw any conclusions about Coan from just over a half of football but I think it’s safe to say he won’t be the starting quarterback for this team any time soon.
Coan finished the night seven-of-21 for 100 yards and a touchdown. He also rushed for another 14 yards. I don’t think Coan looked particularly uncomfortable but he didn’t do much beyond throw at his first read. It’s probably also fair to suggest there isn’t much chemistry between a team’s third-string quarterback and the receivers.
I don’t imagine Coan played himself out of returning for another training camp next season, but the pressure may be on him to take a step forward to stick around past that.
The Bad
This game didn’t matter in the standings and that showed on the field, but it didn’t have to be this way.
The CFL had an opportunity to ensure that both of their games on the final day of the regular season had meaning and provided a lot of excitement for fans. All they had to do was move the start of this game to either the same time as the Bombers/Alouettes game or at least overlap them to a decent degree.
This is one thing the NFL does every season during the final week of the season. They’ll put games that affect each other in the playoff race in the same window.
If both games were played at the same time then at least as they kicked off, both would have mattered. You would have instant drama on television as fanbases kept track of both games, switching back and forth between TSN and CTV. With enough time, I’m sure TSN could have put together an NFL Red Zone-like broadcast flipping between both games on TSN+.
Instead, the final game of the regular season in the CFL this season didn’t matter and it was a real dud. If this situation were to happen again, I hope the league would consider changing the schedule for everyone’s sake.
The Dumb
You can file this under things you don’t see every day.
Before the game started, both teams gathered around mid-field for the regular coin flip to determine who would be getting the ball to start the game.
The person in charge of the flip failed to do their one job as the coin was thrown into the air and fell straight to the ground without flipping over once. The game’s head official then announced that the coin would be re-flipped.
Perhaps this should have been taken as a sign of things to come for the rest of the night.
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