Mitchell Blair | Riderville.com Staff
REGINA — Frustration is described in the dictionary as “a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems.”
That sentence could just be replaced by the logo of the Saskatchewan Roughriders after a 26-13 loss to the BC Lions on Saturday night at Mosaic Stadium, because frustration was highly evident amongst the team as they searched for answers after dropping their second straight game.
“Every time we made a play, there was a penalty to either stall our drive or keep one of theirs alive,” receiver Taj Smith said. “We just have to be more fundamentally sound.”
Defensive back Macho Harris echoed the thoughts of Smith saying on a night of frustration, that tops the cake.
“We can’t make foolish mistakes. Every time we took a step forward, we took two steps back.” Harris said. “The good thing is it’s just Week 3 and everything that plagued us tonight can be corrected.”
The game perhaps turned at the end of the first half. The Riders had the ball and were seemingly getting ready to run out the clock and go into the locker-room with a 13-11 lead, but Hugh Charles fumbled the football with the Lions recovering, allowing them to get a Paul McCallum 41-yard field goal and a 14-13 halftime lead they would not give up.
The frustration being felt was even evident on the face of Head Coach Corey Chamblin, who himself seemed to be looking for answers about what he had just witnessed.
“Not good,’’ Chamblin replied when asked what his emotional state was.
“I can take the winning and losing the football games. That’s part of it. But not when we do things that put ourselves behind, not when we don’t make the plays, not when we’re not fundamentally sound and doing the things that we’re taught to do, one, and two, just making sure that the guys are disciplined enough to do it.”
If the fumble to end the first half was not the momentum killer for the Green and White on this night, it may have come with 11 minutes to go in the football game. The Lions had just kicked a field goal to go up 19-13 when Darian Durant looked downfield and threw a pass to Eron Riley that went through the receiver’s hands and fell to the turf at the Lions 23 yard line, much to the angst of the almost 33,000 in attendance.
Durant, who threw for 191 yards and a touchdown, couldn’t say whether or not that play was the turning point, but he would say it was just one of those things that didn’t work for his squad on this night.
“I don’t know. That’s a great question,’’ Durant said. “There’s so many plays. You can’t just pinpoint one that could have been a game-changer. We got so many first downs called back in the second half by penalties. That was a huge play but, at the same time, when things like that happen you have to move forward. We just shot ourselves in the foot.’’
The team now heads into it’s bye week, and they won’t play again until July 26 when Ricky Ray, Dwight Anderson and the Toronto Argonauts come to town. The team won’t practice again until July 22 and Durant feels that time off can be used to try and get everyone on the same page.
“I think so, “Durant stated. “ I think we just need to sit down and regroup and get ourselves back together and find out what we’re good at and go with that.’’
