Jimmy Jeong/CFL.ca
Tension is a unique feeling. Often misguided, always tough to define and never allows the status quo to remain.
One look at the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ offence this season and you can feel the tension. Be it via the passionate fandom of Rider Nation begging for more, or the sideline fervour of former Edmonton head coach Jason Maas as he revels in the ability to focus solely on scoring points, tension is present and it’s going to drive Saskatchewan as they head towards the playoffs.
Take Week 9 in Calgary as an example. Cody Fajardo goes back and forth with Maas on the sideline about what to call down six points with under a minute left from the Calgary 48-yard-line. It’s third-and-10 and Maas appears to ‘win’ the discussion before Fajardo threw a game-ending interception and showed his frustration on the sidelines in what will forever be known amongst the sea of green as ‘the 50-50 game.’
Three weeks later Calgary and Saskatchewan were back at it again, with Fajardo up 10 points with about two minutes remaining. An untimely time count violation sent a bewildered Fajardo to the sideline for another heated discussion with Maas as they sorted out the failure to launch.
Both of these are important moments in the journey of Saskatchewan’s 2021 offence and I believe they make the Riders better — despite optics — because they so closely simulate the high tide of emotions that a playoff game will inevitably present.
The reality of the Riders this season is that everything goes through Winnipeg. Yes, they have to win their first playoff game whether it be home or away, Calgary or BC but the light at the end of that West semi tunnel is a third matchup with their Labour Day and Banjo Bowl rivals.
To go into Winnipeg and get a victory after the back-to-back dismissals of early September will require mental toughness, guts and a willingness to make some brave decisions, all while executing at the highest level possible. What better to prepare Fajardo for that challenge than to make everything feel like a playoff game right now?
Jason Maas offence is demanding, there’s no doubt about that. Watch with a close eye and you’ll see just how much he throws at his quarterbacks and expects them to absorb. As one example here is the offensive personnel packages used by Maas’ Riders in 2021 compared to Buck Pierce and Zach Collaros’ Bombers attack.
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Neither package is concretely better than the other, but they are fundamentally different in approach and expectation.
No matter what formation, package or situation the Riders’ offence has been in this year, Kyran Moore has played an important role. That makes the announcement this week that a knee injury suffered last Saturday in Montreal will end his season all that much more difficult a pill to swallow. Here — unfortunately — are Moore’s final 2021 season targets.
Perhaps no player in the Saskatchewan offence better depicts the crippling deficiency of deep ball completions in 2021 than Moore. Despite ‘Swerve’s’ ability to swivel and weave through traffic, he caught a completed pass beyond 20-yards just twice this season on 23 attempts. A result which forces us to ask: Just how far back of the CFL average for deep ball success is the Riders’ passing attack through 13 weeks?
The result is staggering. Maas and Fajardo have created an ultra-efficient passing attack under 20-yards, but beyond that, the numbers don’t suggest big play success come playoff time with opportunities to find answers this season dwindling with each sunset.
On passes of more than 20-yards in the air, Fajardo is currently 10/57 (17.5 per cent) while every CFL quarterback not named Fajardo is a combined 186/521 (35.7 per cent). Can the Riders win a West Semi, storm Winnipeg and crash the party in Hamilton on their way to a Grey Cup without deep passing plays hitting at a higher clip? Maybe they could pick everyone apart but at some point in the CFL, a home run or two is what separates winners from losers and champions from runner-ups.
Enter Duke Williams back from the NFL and Shaq Evans from injury.
The dynamic duo’s return led me to wonder who has had the best games for Riders’ receivers in 2021 when measuring usage vs. production.
Kian Schaffer-Baker’s star turn against Toronto is the best single performance, while Moore litters the top of the chart with high volume, high production outings. As Duke Williams finds his fit, he has produced two incredibly different games. One was a low usage, high production Week 12 game and the other a high usage, low efficiency performance against Montreal last week in a rain-soaked defensive battle.
In order for Saskatchewan to achieve their dreams a lot of things have to go right over the next month. Better pass protection, Fajardo finding a rhythm with Williams and effective first down running by William Powell, to name just a few. Time is running out. Solutions have to come now or never and the tension is building with each opportunity. Playoff football on the prairies, where every play feels like a game inside a game, is coming. Buckle up.
