The Saskatchewan Roughriders have won the 112th Grey Cup!
In Riderville, many dream seasons have turned into nightmares over the years, but this group refused to let that happen. They almost did several times, which we’ll get into in a moment, but in the end, it was green and white confetti falling on the team that was the best in the CFL all season long.
It was a game that looked well in hand for three quarters, but still required a pass breakup on the final play to lock up a 25-17 win and the franchise’s fifth Grey Cup championship.
For several reasons, this is a unique story to write. All season long, my thoughts were geared toward how the result, performance, or play affected this team’s chances of winning the Grey Cup. Well, that job is finished now.
One of Saskatchewan’s players is probably drinking something out of the Grey Cup as you’re reading this article. Nothing that happened in this game or any thought anyone has can change that.
So, aside from “they really did it,” here are my thoughts on the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ Grey Cup-winning performance in Winnipeg.
Wind in their Sayles from the very beginning
All year, we have focused on Saskatchewan’s starts to games. For much of the season, it took the Riders a couple of possessions to get going. Well, not in the Grey Cup.
On the game’s first possession, Marcus Sayles covered a Davis Alexander deep pass perfectly, intercepting it right in front of Tyson Philpot.
Sayles was such a big part of the secondary for Saskatchewan this season. With that unit being the focus of the week after Philpot’s big game earlier in the year, it was fitting that he came up with a big play to start the game. He followed it up with good coverage on Charleston Rambo on the Alouettes’ second drive.
There were some blown coverages as the Grey Cup went on, but in the game’s biggest moment, the defence came up with their biggest play. Fittingly, it was Sayles again in the right spot as he was able to jump on the loose ball moments after it was knocked from Shea Patterson’s grasp.
Defence wins championships
It wasn’t just Sayles who stepped up for the defence as the whole unit had a very strong day against Montreal. As with most championship games, there are going to be some moments they want back, but they still held Montreal to just 17 points. Clearly, the good far outweighed the bad.
Davis Alexander was obviously banged up in this game, as was widely reported during the week. Even if Alexander had been perfectly healthy, though, the Riders didn’t give him a lot to work with. I would have liked for the Riders’ pass rush to have put more pressure on the limited QB but Saskatchewan knew that he was mainly going to have to stay in the pocket, and they did a good job of limiting his options.
As mentioned above, Sayles made a couple of very big plays. C.J. Reavis also had a really good recovery after getting turned around a little on the deep ball he broke up that was intended for Tyler Snead.
The Riders’ defence was the foundation of this team all year long, and with the Grey Cup on the line, they made the plays they needed to.
Change of tune
The biggest talking point coming out of the West Final was Corey Mace’s decision to kick the ball on a pair of occasions very late against the B.C. Lions.
The second-year head coach made the opposite choice early in this game with a third-and-two from inside the Montreal five-yard line. After it looked like it wasn’t going to go the Saskatchewan’s way, the eye in the sky smiled upon the Roughriders with a defensive pass interference call going against Montreal.
That is why you go for it in these situations. You either score or you force Montreal to start very deep in their own territory — though there are always other things that can go your way, like drawing a pass interference penalty.
One play later, Tommy Stevens powered his way in for the Riders’ first score of the game. I haven’t agreed with all of Mace’s decisions this year, especially when it comes to third down and kicks. However, he sure seemed to push all the right buttons in the two playoff games.
Trevor Harris has won the big one
Trevor Harris has been called many things in his career, but now the list of descriptors has to start with Grey Cup champion as a starter. If you aren’t an Alouettes fan — and possibly even then — how do you feel anything but thrilled for Harris, who certainly took the scenic route to reach CFL supremacy?
He earned every bit of it in this game. It was a bit of a rocky start, but once he started picking up on what Montreal was doing, he got into a rhythm. The Alouettes were showing blitz more often than they were bringing it and early on that seemed to work. Even with no one coming, Harris seemed to feel some pressure, rushing a throw to Ouellette that nearly went for a pick-six because he assumed he was running out of time.
Once Harris got into his flow in the middle part of the game, he was excellent. He spread the ball around in true Harris fashion, with four different pass-catchers having a reception of 29 yards or more. He didn’t get a passing TD in the game, but he was able to move the ball very effectively through the air, finishing the Grey Cup with just four incompletions on 27 attempts and 302 yards passing on the day.
I will admit, I wasn’t convinced that this day would come when the Riders signed Harris. He felt like an option to stabilize things while they figured out some of the other problems they had, but he ended up being the perfect QB for this team.
Saskatchewan had a slew of injuries at receiver this year, and he still got the most out of whoever was on the field with him. For a team that has a very good defence, all he was asked to do was not put them in tough spots. Harris hasn’t thrown an interception since September. He was exactly what this team needed, and now he gets to celebrate with them as Grey Cup champions.
Clutch Canadian
There’s nothing like a pair of 100-yard receiving games in the playoffs and a Most Outstanding Canadian trophy to erase the memories of a frustrating regular season. Samuel Emilus did not have the year he would have wanted, with injuries causing major problems throughout the season.
With that said, Saskatchewan couldn’t have asked for a better performance from the 28-year-old. He made a couple of very important plays for the Riders in this Grey Cup with the offence still trying to find its groove early in the second quarter, Emilus caught a pass on second-and-seven well short of the sticks. He was able to turn it into a first down with a really strong run after the catch, helping to set up Saskatchewan’s first TD of the game.
Then as all the momentum sat on the Montreal sideline, Emilus made a fantastic toe-tapping catch on the sideline for a first down that got the Riders moving. The drive didn’t end in points, but it at least helped Saskatchewan take more time off the clock and gave them a bit of the momentum back.
Even in the brief viewings we had of him this season, Emilus showed that the future is bright for him, and he put up the type of performance that Rider Nation was hoping he could in a game as big as this.
Ouel-let them get rolling
For the second week in a row, A.J. Ouellette’s biggest role was giving the Saskatchewan passing attack time to find itself. I know we just addressed the big games from Harris and Emilus, but it didn’t exactly start that way. It took the Riders a bit of time to find their footing offensively.
Much like the West Final, they didn’t fall too far behind because Ouellette was strong right from the word go. He didn’t end up with as many rushing yards as he had against the Lions, but he had a big reception that set up his touchdown to give him over 100 yards from scrimmage for the game.
We’ve talked before about his importance to the offence, and it showed up in this game as he helped the Riders set the tone for their championship win.
Big props to the big boys
None of what we’ve discussed would have been possible without the play of the offensive line. The big boys up front have been huge for Saskatchewan all year, and they came up big in Winnipeg.
Montreal was tied for the league lead in sacks coming into the game but Trevor Harris’ jersey stayed clean, minus a few champagne stains. They gave the veteran quarterback time to work and provided Ouellette with room to run against one of the best and most creative defences in the league.
Saskatchewan Roughrider football
The real sign of the buy-in Corey Mace has gotten from his team is the blocking of the receivers downfield. If you go back and watch the aforementioned Emlius catch-and-run for a first down, you’ll see Ajou Ajou enter the screen at some point and block some poor soul into next week. That was happening on seemingly every play, and it seems like it was happening all season long.
Every championship team needs an identity. When you get to a championship game, emotions are high, and you don’t know what to think or what to do, a strong team identity acts as a base to get everything calmed down and back on track.
With plays like Ajou’s and others from the receivers while Ouellette was doing his thing, you could see the identity that Mace has created in two years in Saskatchewan, and now they have a pretty strong proof of concept with a Grey Cup win.
Super Mario is back
Mario Alford was a weapon for Saskatchewan at the start of the season. A mid-season injury put a halt to that, and even upon return, he didn’t seem like the same guy.
In the Grey Cup, however, he looked like the Alford that started the season for the Green and White. He took the opening kickoff of the third quarter 38 yards to help set up what ended up being the game-winning touchdown.
It’s too bad that injuries took a lot of his season away from him, because Alford seemed to be on track for a very big year, though I’m sure he’ll settle for a big moment in the biggest game of the year.
Never apologize for a win
When Saskatchewan won the Grey Cup in 2007, critics suggested the Roughriders got lucky because Kevin Glenn got hurt in the East Final, leaving them to face the inexperienced Ryan Dinwiddie. I already have my guard up about this year’s win and what might be said about beating a banged-up Davis Alexander.
I haven’t seen many comments about it since the win, so I might be defensive for no reason. However, they did mention Alexander’s injury 836 times on the broadcast tonight — and it could be more as those were just mentions I counted between the stream cutting out. As such, I feel the need to defend the victory a bit.
I want to be clear: this win wasn’t about luck — well, I guess it was a little bit, but it was about creating your own luck.
One of the parts of winning a championship that gets romanticized but also, strangely, overlooked is the grind of surviving to get to that point. Being the best team is a big part of it — or at least getting hot at the right time.
But a huge part of it is survival. Having your body withstand everything that a football season throws at it, starting with training camp in May, is as big a part of winning a championship as anything. That isn’t to say Alexander’s body failed him because he’s not championship material or anything like that. In a way it was luck, though it was bad luck on Montreal’s side.
The reason I hate the “Team X got lucky when they won that championship” discussion is that you have to put yourself in a position to take advantage of that situation. It wasn’t luck that won the Riders 12 games in the regular season, giving them three weeks to get as healthy as they could for these last two playoff games. It wasn’t luck that beat the B.C. Lions, although I’m sure there are some fans in Vancouver with a pixelated, zoomed-in image of Tommy Nield’s game-winning catch that disagree with me.
Was it helpful to Saskatchewan’s chances that Alexander was less than 100 percent? Absolutely. But why didn’t Calgary take advantage of it? Why couldn’t the Lions benefit from this lucky turn? Because they weren’t there.
The Riders earned their way to the Grey Cup and put themselves in a spot where, if something happened, they could take advantage. To whatever extent you want to believe luck played a factor in this game, the Riders were the ones who created the situation where they could take advantage of it.
Final Thoughts
I want to close this by saying thank you to all of you for reading this. Whether this is your first time reading my postgame thoughts or your twentieth, I want to thank you for helping make this one of the coolest times of my life.
I grew up watching this team. I still remember making the 90-minute drive from Assiniboia, Sask., to watch Reggie Slack and the Riders get their brains beaten in by Mike Pringle and the Montreal Alouettes while we sat in the very last row of Taylor Field for my first ever in-person game.
I remember watching games on TV, or listening on the radio because the CFL blacked out home games — losing an entire generation of fans in the process. Like so many of you, this has been my team my entire life.
So, to be able to go from waiting after Rider games for player autographs to sharing my thoughts with all of you has been nothing short of an incredible experience. It has been an honour to ride this path with all of you this season, and what a treat that in my first year doing this, we get to talk about a Grey Cup championship.
