The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ organization is poised to celebrate the team’s 2025 Grey Cup championship on Saturday at Mosaic Stadium.
A banner unveiling, to precede the Corey Mace-coached Roughriders’ season opener against the B.C. Lions, will proceed as planned despite the following development.
“I hate to say it, but 2025 died,” offensive lineman Jermarcus Hardrick said. “We have to move on.
“I can’t even live there anymore. It’s almost like rat poison. I can’t even bring it up at home. My wife always says ‘that’s in the past,’ so that’s just the way we’re looking at things. I’m trying to pass it down that way.
“We’ve got great leadership. We always talk about winning today and putting things in the past. I think Mace is doing a great job and the leaders are saying ‘2026 is the only thing that matters.’
“What happened in 2025 isn’t going to help us. There are guys (from the 2025 team) who are not here. A lot has changed since then. If you go in (thinking about 2025), you’re going to get hit in the mouth pretty fast.”
Mace reinforced that message after Tuesday’s practice.
“(The 2025 Grey Cup win) doesn’t have anything to do with this year, period,” he stated.
“We’re a new team. We’ve got to go out there and prove that we’re still a good team.”
The Roughriders were a great team in 2025 — finishing with a 12-6 record and first overall in the CFL’s regular-season standings before winning the Western Final and the Grey Cup.
“That’s just the bar we set for ourselves,” the Roughriders’ third-year field boss said. “We set it for ourselves in ’24 when we first got here.
“Hard work works. If we’re not afraid to put the work in, then we’ll be in a position to potentially play in a big game like that.”
There is a theory that the importance of each game will be elevated in the eyes of opposing teams that aspire to knock off the defending Grey Cup champions.
“I don’t look at it as being a target,” Hardrick said. “You’re going to get your best shot every game.
“I respect every player that I play against. I lose sleep over every player that I play against. There are some guys you lose a little bit more sleep over.
“I just respect the game and I respect all the players. Even if we didn’t win last year, I always try to play with a target on my back. I hope we all do. That’s just the way I look at it.”
In other words, complacency will not be an issue.
“You can’t get too comfortable,” Mace told reporters. “If you get comfortable and go through the motions, you guys can do that for us.
“You just keep pushing the envelope. We set a new bar for ourselves the last two years, so we can’t slip on our expectations for ourselves.”
What are the expectations?
“The sky’s the limit for this group,” quarterback Trevor Harris said. “We’ve just got to make sure that we’re pressing on the gas pedal every day.”
Saturday’s game is to begin at 5 p.m. Tickets are AVAILABLE HERE.