The Canadian Press
REGINA – After taking major steps forward over the last couple weeks, the Riders took one backwards on Saturday night.
Saskatchewan had won all of its last four games, coming out each night proving they were ones to watch in the West, even though the hopes of making the playoffs this season had long been forgotten.
Then on a cold, rainy night in Regina, the Riders fell 19-14 to the Montreal Alouettes in its worst offensive showing since early September.
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“It’s just frustrating to take a step backward after playing well (lately),” head coach Chris Jones told Riderville.com when asked about his team’s performance. “We took more pre-snap penalties in the first half than we did in three weeks prior and that’s frustrating. Quite honestly, if you don’t take those pre-snap penalties they (Montreal) don’t have any points there in the first quarter and they ended up getting six.”
And like Jones acknowledged, it was penalties that led to both of Montreal’s scores in the first quarter.
On the Als’ first possession of the ball game, Riders’ defensive lineman Ese Mrabure-Ajufo was called for offside, moving the Als to Saskatchewan’s 41-yard line. Then, a few plays later, Boris Bede kicked a 49-yard field goal to give Montreal their first three points of the contest.
Later in the first quarter, another offside call, this time on linebacker Jonathan Newsome, moved Montreal deep into Saskatchewan territory and Bede kicked another field goal, this time from 25 yards out.
The Riders, who have scored 107 points over their four-game winning streak, were held to just five points in the first half by the Alouettes’ defence. Tyler Crapigna put three points on the board with a field goal in the second quarter and the other two came from Bede conceding a safety just prior.
“Montreal is a very good defensive football team,” Jones said of his team’s opponent. “It’s no accident that they came in and played well. They’ve played well all year regardless of what’s happening around them. They’re very well coached, number one, and number two, they play very hard and have a great belief system. We didn’t play offensively until about eleven minutes to go in the game.”
“I think that there’s a lot of factors that came into play today but we just got whipped as an offence. We had our defence on the field way too much”
Darian Durant
The Riders first, and only, major of the ball game came with just seven minutes left in the fourth quarter when quarterback Darian Durant took off and ran into the end zone himself for a 10-yard touchdown. The score was set up by a 10-play, 97-yard drive down the field as the Riders started to look like the team fans in Riderville had come accustomed to seeing lately. But it was too little, too late for a comeback for Saskatchewan.
The home team could have placed blame on the bad weather conditions for their loss, but their veteran pivot had other ideas of what went wrong in the club’s second last game at Mosaic Stadium.
“I think that there’s a lot of factors that came into play today but we just got whipped as an offence,” Durant said of his team’s loss. “We had our defence on the field way too much. We were getting two-and-outs and they were getting sacks and pressure. We just couldn’t move the ball. I wouldn’t say it was a step back but we didn’t have the type of production that we’d like to have.”
Next week, in the first half of a home-and-home with the BC Lions, the Riders will be playing its last game at the historic Mosaic. Although Durant and his club understands the significance of the game, they’ll only be thinking about one thing: winning.
“I know it’s going to be a sentimental day for this province and especially the true fans of the team,” he said. “But we just have to try to get a victory.”
-With files from Riderville.com
