Photo courtesy: Saskatchewan Roughriders

It was Christmas in July at Mosaic Stadium, and the Riders delivered another win for their fans. But, as they are oft to do, it was far more interesting than it ever deserved to be.

Thanks to a number of classic Elks-ing moments by their opponents, the Riders jumped out to a 21-4 lead heading into the fourth quarter before tucking in for their late-game nap. That allowed Edmonton to put a scare into the 27,933 fans in attendance, as the home team hung on for the 21-18 win.

Head coach Corey Mace may not apologize for another win, nor should he, but eventually his team is going to have to learn to put their opponents away when given the chance, or it will come back to bite them.

Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ sixth win of the season.

The Good

It’s an old cliche, but it’s true: football is a game that is won along the trenches. The Riders won that battle on Friday night against the Elks.

After a difficult game a couple of weeks ago against Calgary, things have improved over the last couple of outings. Against the Lions, starting quarterback Trevor Harris wasn’t sacked at all, and he was only taken down behind the line of scrimmage once against the Elks. This despite yet another change along the line this week, when guard Zack Fry became the latest CFL player to be involved in a car accident and couldn’t play.

As has been the case through almost a season and a half now, it doesn’t seem to matter who’s along the line — which is a good thing, since there have been many different players used.

The big change for the Riders on this night was the burst of activity from the defence, who got to Elks’ quarterback Cody Fajardo eight times. They made life miserable for the former Riders pivot, who was making his first start against his former team.

As expected, the number of turnovers the Riders’ defence is creating has regressed to the mean this season after generating an unsustainable number of big plays last season. In order to make up for it, the team could use more nights like this from the guys up front.

The Bad

All wins are equal, but as the season goes along, trends emerge and certain aspects of how a team wins or loses start to matter. In this case, the Riders’ offence hasn’t been able to put together a full sixty-minute effort all that often.

Over the last three weeks, the Riders have put up exactly zero points in the fourth quarter. Luckily for them, they played the B.C. Lions and Edmonton Elks, who are currently not nearly as good as them during the rest of the game, so it didn’t ultimately matter. They also put up zero points in the fourth quarter against the Calgary Stampeders, but that was in a come-from-behind position, which is another issue we can talk about another day.

Overall, they’ve been blanked in the fourth quarter in four of their seven games this season, and they’ve only outscored their opponent twice in the game’s final period.

Through seven games, the Riders are averaging 5.7 points per game in the fourth quarter. That’s 40 points total, with all of them coming in just three outings.

In this game specifically, even a late-game rouge probably would have been enough to end it.

From my vantage point, it feels like this team is missing a jolt of attitude, swagger, energy — whatever you want to call it. As the fourth quarter progressed, the bench looked like it was still five minutes into the first quarter. While a certain amount of level-headedness is a good thing, football is also an emotional sport and sometimes an extra boost can help you get over the top.

Obviously, this isn’t the only thing going on. I think some decisions, like punting on a third-and-short near midfield with an opportunity to put your opponent away, could be done differently. I am sure there are some execution issues that could be cleaned up, too.

Whatever the answer is, the team needs to figure it out if they hope to achieve their goal of winning a Grey Cup this season.

The Dumb

Over the last number of years, the Riders have taken flak from some fans and media for their lack of creativity when it comes to theme nights.

Most of the games this year are the same general themes re-packaged a little bit, with Country Night rebranded as Back-Forty Night. Their next game, titled Riderland, is a riff on previous Family Day games.

However, I will give the organization credit for taking a swing with this game’s theme of Christmas in July. With the game falling on July 25th, it was basically the perfect evening to execute the idea.

As someone who works in retail as well, I have to admit I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the evening’s theme, given how difficult those couple of months leading up to Christmas can be. But even I have to admit, the night was fun, mostly thanks to buy-in from a number of the fans.

There were a lot of people in attendance who dressed up for the occasion, especially commendable given the grossly hot weather we experience in Regina. The tunes were used sparingly and at the right times. Mixing Christmas themes into the regularly scheduled programming worked, and the light show at the three-minute warning through fans’ flashlights on their phones was extremely cool.

Job well done by everyone involved. It’s good to have fun at the ballpark.