The good, the bad, and the dumb of the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ 40-34 loss to Toronto

Photo: Tanner Piper/Piper Sports Photography/3DownNation. All rights reserved.

They say it’s difficult to go on the road on a short week, but does that apply when you’re the visiting team in your own stadium? I don’t know.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders dropped a 40-34 decision to the Toronto Argonauts in front of 25,035 fans on Friday night, most of whom cheered for the “road” team at Mosaic Stadium.

The CFL regular season is more of a marathon than a sprint, so there’s nothing to worry about in Riderville at this point. They were never going to go undefeated through 18 games. One loss to an East Division opponent isn’t a big deal, though how the team responds next week is.

Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ first loss of the season.

The Good

The history of the CFL is littered with undersized receivers who end up being diamonds in the rough, and the Riders might have found another one in their own backyard.

University of Saskatchewan product Daniel Wiebe ended up seeing a lot more time on the field than he was probably expecting following an injury to Sam Emilus (more on that in a bit). He certainly made the most of it.

Wiebe’s two catches for 48 yards don’t necessarily jump off the page out of context, but in his two receptions the Saskatoon native ripped off a 31-yard catch-and-run, and hauled in a 17-yard touchdown on which he took a hellacious hit but still hung on.

What you do when the lights are on matters, and Wiebe has earned more playing time after his performance against Toronto.

It’s true that you can’t teach size and being a bigger receiver has its advantages. However, there are spots in the CFL for guys who aren’t as big — especially when you’ve been productive for your entire career before turning pro.

The Bad

It was a rough night all around for the Green and White, as all three phases played their part in ensuring the team’s first loss of the season.

When Argos running back Sam Hicks gashed the Riders for a 61-yard rush on the first play from scrimmage, you had to know it wasn’t going to be a banner night for the defence.

Oddly, it was their best game in terms of sacking the quarterback, bringing Chad Kelly down four times. They finally generated an interception early in the game, too.

With that said, giving up 40 points is never good, no matter how some of the stats look.

The offence had a slow start. Trevor Harris threw a bad interception deep in Toronto territory, Jaylen Johnson lost a fumble that led to the Double Blue’s game-winning score, and the special teams unit allowed returner Janarion Grant to continue to terrorize this team with another return touchdown.

It was truly a team effort.

However, the absolute worst part of this game was once again a decision by the coaching staff.

In the first half, returner James Letcher Jr. suffered an injury and had to leave the game. For whatever reason, star Canadian receiver Samuel Emilus was tasked with returning kicks afterwords.

This isn’t to say Emilus isn’t capable, but it simply wasn’t worth the risk to put one of their top three receivers in that spot. Surely, there are other players on the roster capable of returning a kick.

On just his second punt return, Emilus also had to leave the game injured, which was not only a blow to the special teams but also the offence for the rest of the night. This was a decision that could hurt the team for weeks to come.

Unless you have no other choice, a player of Emlius’ calibre simply shouldn’t be put in harms way like that.

Bonus Bad

Thank goodness these “prairie blizzard” uniforms are a one-off never to be worn again.

There are several jerseys in the CFL at the moment where it’s impossible to tell who is who if you are in the stadium, but these jerseys may take the cake as the worst. Even watching some of the replays on TSN, it was difficult to read the numbers.

This needs to end and this isn’t even a media guy complaining for media reasons — the fans in the stands deserve more, too.

The Dumb 

As mentioned, this was technically a home game for the Argos, though you’d never really know other than a few different advertisements around the field.

Everything else went on as if it was just another Riders home game, which for all intents and purposes it was. It would have been fun to see the game day operations side lean into the Argos home game bit a little bit.

Introduce the Argos last. Change up some of the in-game promotional contests to make them a little more Argo-centric. Where was Argos mascot Jason?

Saskatchewan didn’t have to go all-out and completely rebuild their game day script and graphics, but a little nod would have been nice.

I think the fans that did show up to this game might have had a little fun with it, too, making the night a little more memorable.

Perhaps the perfect example of how indifferent both sides were to the whole thing was the Pil Country logo being covered up at field-level so it didn’t appear on the broadcast, even though the big logo in the stands remained completely visible.

The whole thing felt like an exercise in honouring on-field advertising contracts and that’s it.

Joel Gasson is a Regina-based sports writer, broadcaster and football fanatic. He is also a beer aficionado.