Rider Insider: Nov. 9, 2015

Perhaps for just that evening, the Saskatchewan Roughriders could feel good about themselves. The win capped their record at 3-15 which means this club won’t go down as the worst team in Rider history. That honour belongs to the 1959 Riders who finished 1-15, and equalled the 3-15 record of 1999. At the very least, these Riders didn’t set a franchise record for losses in a year.

And now the retrospective begins.

It was about a month ago I was driving my 15-year old daughter home from school when she asked, “Where did it all go wrong Dad?” She was referring to the Riders’ historic fall from 2013 Grey Cup champions to the CFL’s last-place team less than two years later.

I had to pause for a moment to think about the answer because it’s an incredibly complex situation. The easy and simple answer is that quarterback Darian Durant went down with injury, twice, and the club was a collective 5-21 without him (including last year’s 18-10 playoff loss in Edmonton in the Western Semifinal).

However if it was that easy, head coach Corey Chamblin and General Manager Brendan Taman would’ve kept their jobs. As it was, they were fired together on August 31, 2015 when the Riders started the season 0-9.

36-year old quarterback Kevin Glenn was signed this past off-season to ensure the team wouldn’t falter in the event of another injury to Durant but when he went down in Week 1, the team still couldn’t win.
The Roughriders’ defense was the culprit, in this reporter’s opinion, for the write-off of a season 2015 became. It wasn’t Darian Durant’s responsibility to tackle and even if he stayed healthy this year, it’s reasonable to assume the defensive problems would’ve remained. Unfortunately that’s something we’ll never know, and there’s a line of thought that the trainwreck can still all be pinned on his injuries.
However the team’s braintrust felt otherwise, and that’s why the change was made just prior to Labour Day weekend.

There really is no point examining what went wrong any further although interim GM Jeremy O’Day and interim head coach Bob Dyce are now going back over all aspects of the football operations department including their draft selection, scouting mechanism and individual evaluations of the players and coaching staff.

They’re doing that while not knowing if they’ll even be in the same roles by mid-December. Team President Craig Reynolds is now conducting what we’re told is an “exhaustive” search for the team’s next General Manager and following the conclusion of that, a new head coach will be named followed by the announcement of his staff. The hiring of the new GM is expected before the New Year.

O’Day has made no secret of the fact he’d like strong consideration to be the next General Manager and he seems like the natural choice. He’s been groomed for this position since his retirement as a player after the 2010 season however it’s no slam dunk.

This could very well be the most-important hire of Reynolds’ entire tenure. The lone strike against O’Day is that he’s never performed the job before and that makes many Rider fans nervous. A lot would prefer a more seasoned football man for the position and that will weigh into Reynolds’ consideration, no doubt.

Several candidates have already applied and we’re told there’s a “Rock Star” applicant among them however his identity is unknown by anyone other than Reynolds.

It’s going to make the next few weeks incredibly interesting and will be a hot topic at Grey Cup Week in Winnipeg.

Rider great Roger Aldag once said there are only two seasons in Saskatchewan: Rider season and winter.

So it’s now winter, but the Riders will be front and centre all through the upcoming winter months.

Thanks for reading this column over the past six months and rest assured knowing the best days for the Riders are yet to come!

by Rod Pedersen

Rider Insider: Nov. 9, 2015

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