TSN and SportsCage analyst Glen Suitor believes the Saskatchewan Roughriders should make a change at kicker after the team\u00a0decided to have Trevor Harris punt the ball 45 yards to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the fourth quarter while leading 31-24 during the Labour Day Classic.<\/p>\n
“Let’s be frank, that situation screamed for a field goal attempt from 51 yards. You make it two possessions, it’s game over right there. That’s the conventional wisdom and the right call is to put your field goal team on the field. I think it would have been about a 51 yarder\u00a0and you make it a two-possession game. Now, 51 is not a gimme, so there is some possibility of a miss there on the field goal,” Suitor said on\u00a0the SportsCage.<\/p>\n
“They didn’t do that\u00a0and it appears to me from the outside looking in that it’s because they’re not confident in him to make those. In my opinion, now it becomes the rest of the locker room saying to themselves:\u00a0‘If Brett [Lauther] is still kicking when we go to Winnipeg, then that means that I can miss three or four tackles every game as a DB\u00a0or I can drop two passes a game as a receiver. I’ll get half a season to work out of my slump.'”<\/p>\n
Harris was credited with\u00a0a rouge from his\u00a0punt, which extended the Riders\u00a0lead to 32-24. Later, the Bombers\u00a0offence\u00a0marched down and scored a touchdown when Zach Collaros passed it to Dalton Schoen, which made\u00a0the score to 32-30. Saskatchewan\u00a0ultimately closed out the game when Tevaughn Campbell <\/a>prevented the Bombers from converting a\u00a0two-point attempt\u00a0and intercepted the ball while returning it 112 yards for a pick-two, extending the Riders lead to 34-30. Lauther finished the game making his lone\u00a0field goal attempt from 34 yards but he\u00a0missed a 32-yard\u00a0point after touchdown attempt late in the third quarter.<\/p>\n “Brett’s a fantastic human being\u00a0and I don’t think you cut Brett. I think you now have to look at maybe the injured list so no one can steal him and give Campbell Fair <\/a>an opportunity,” Suitor said. “When it changes the game management for your head coach because you’re not confident in him, I think that’s probably beyond the point where you should have made a change.”<\/p>\n Statistically among CFL kickers, Lauther is last when it comes to field goal percentage at\u00a065.7<\/a>\u00a0percent. Suitor provided\u00a0a story from his playing career when he was in a similar slump to Lauther.<\/p>\n “I’ll give you guys a quick story: the closest that I came to this thing was when Don Matthews was our head coach\u00a0and I was in the training room after two bad games in a row.\u00a0I’m sitting there getting ice on my ankle,\u00a0Don Matthews walks in and he says:\u00a0‘Here’s what I can tell you, Glen,\u00a0if you have one bad game\u00a0I wouldn’t even come and talk to you about it,\u00a0It’s a one-off, everybody has one, don’t worry about it, recover for the next game, that’s all I care about. If you have two in a row, we’re gonna talk,\u00a0this is becoming habit-forming, and if you have three in a row, you’re not gonna be able to have a fourth,'” Suitor recalled.<\/p>\n “I think it’s a different scenario with Brett in being that\u00a0abrupt with him\u00a0and I don’t think coaches even talk to players anymore like that. Although, it drove home the point to me in a very open and true way that if I don’t have a good game that’s coming up, I’m not going to be able to go out there and have a fourth attempt. I think we’re there now, I like Brett, I’ve been saying for a month now that I think he can work out of this, but if you’re making a decision to not kick a field goal and that opportunity to get it at a two-possession game because you don’t have confidence in your kicker, it’s time to make a change.”<\/p>\n The Green and White face the Bombers for the Labour Day rematch on\u00a0Saturday. Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk, and Wes Cates\u00a0bring you the pre-game show at 11 a.m. Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder\u00a0have the game call at 2 p.m. Listen to our thorough coverage on 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network.<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TSN and SportsCage analyst Glen Suitor believes the Saskatchewan Roughriders should make a change at kicker after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,66888,82],"class_list":["post-120137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-saskatchewan-roughriderswinnipeg-blue-bombersglen-suitorbrett-lauthercampbell-fair","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}