Roughriders’ GM Jeremy O’Day looks forward to 2025 CFL season

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Although the Saskatchewan Roughriders 2024 season didn’t end in a Grey Cup victory, there were still plenty of positives in the eyes of general manager Jeremy O’Day.

“Obviously there’s one goal when you go into every season, it’s to win a championship so when you don’t reach that goal, it’s disappointing,” said O’Day. “But I thought we took a lot of positive steps as a football team.

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“Some of the plans that we had going in, some of the things that we wanted to accomplish and improve on going into the season, I thought that we were successful in doing that.”

On Thursday, O’Day met with reporters for his end-of-season media availability after his Roughriders lost in the CFL’s Western final to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 38-22 on Nov. 9.

And while the season ended a week sooner than they had hoped, after back-to-back years of missing the playoffs with 6-12 records, O’Day was glad to see the team improve this season under first-year head coach Corey Mace, who guided the team to a second-place finish in the division with a 9-8-1 record despite a seven-game winless skid in the middle of the season.

“Corey is everything that we hoped you would be,” said O’Day. “The message, the love for his players, the love the players have for him. It’s really genuine. The players care about him. He cares about them, which is great. And, you know, they just kept fighting.

“I felt that it was different than years before, just from the fact of just kind of how close we were in those games.”

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After interviewing head coaching candidates this time last year before hiring Mace on Nov. 30, O’Day won’t have to worry about major coaching staff moves this season.

Instead, he can focus on what his team will look like on the field in 2025 as the Roughriders want to build on what they established this year.

“It wasn’t the goal that we were after, but it was a step within that grand plan of winning a championship,” said O’Day. “We’re going to use it as a building block.

“I truly feel like this is an ascending team. I feel like we have young players that are becoming really good players. I feel like we’ve done a decent job putting ourselves in position going into the off-season. I feel like there’s some momentum there, and our players are excited about 2025.”

O’Day’s biggest priority this off-season will be deciding what to do at the quarterback position.

With starter Trevor Harris and backup Shea Patterson set to become free agents in February, Jack Coan and Michael Hiers are the only two quarterbacks currently under contract.

During Harris’ year-end availability, the quarterback expressed his desire to return for a third season with the Green and White next year but with the veteran turning 39 when training camp gets underway in 2025, O’Day will need to determine if he wants to target a new starting quarterback or bring back Harris, who was named a West Division all-star despite missing six games with a knee injury.

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“It’s early so we just started the evaluation process,” said O’Day. “We haven’t made a decision on any of the players yet as far as who’s coming back (or) who we want back.

“Trevor is everything that you see on a regular basis, when he speaks, when he’s in the huddle, when he’s in the locker room, when he’s when he’s home with his family — he’s a true leader.

“We love Trevor and those are obviously discussions that we’ll have moving forward, but nothing to report right now.”

If O’Day decides to move on from Harris, there are several younger quarterbacks who are slated to become free agents that O’Day could target including Montreal’s Davis Alexander or Edmonton’s Tre Ford.

The B.C. Lions have also made it publicly known that Vernon Adams Jr. will be traded this off-season. However, O’Day said they haven’t had conversations with the Lions as of Thursday.

“If you want to know if I’ve talked to B.C., I have not,” said O’Day. “We’ll just wait and see what happens there with whether they reach out or not.

“I haven’t had any conversation with them to up to this point again. I don’t want to talk about players that are under contract with other teams.”

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tshire@postmedia.com

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