Meyers scores game-winning touchdown in fourth quarter as Riders hold on for 20-13 victory<\/p>\n
OTTAWA — As the old saying goes, a win is a win in the standings no matter how it looks on the scoresheet.<\/p>\n
And while the Saskatchewan Roughriders were far from perfect against the Ottawa Redblacks on Friday night, a handful of big plays on offence and defence were enough to bring home a 20-13 victory in Canadian Football League action.<\/p>\n
The Riders improve to 11-4 on the season and can now secure a home playoff date if the Calgary Stampeders can defeat the B.C. Lions on Saturday. The Redblacks fall to 4-11 and have been eliminated from postseason\u00a0contention.<\/p>\n
Most importantly for Saskatchewan, the win snapped a two-game losing skid and went a long way to helping the Roughriders\u00a0regain some of the mojo that made them the definitive top team in the CFL not that long ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s incredible,\u00a0you can hear the music in the background and as always we made it fun for everybody watching at home,\u201d head coach Corey Mace said outside a raucous Saskatchewan dressing room on the Rider Broadcast Network post-game show.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought our energy going into the game was incredible to start. At halftime we go in with a little bit of a lead and the message was to keep swinging. Offensively, we weren’t pleased with how we were moving the ball in the second quarter,\u00a0we had an opportunity to go out there\u00a0and start fast in the second half and certainly we did that, trying to establish ourselves a little bit and we got some good chunk plays with [Dohnte Meyers].\u201d<\/p>\n
Meyers ended up having\u00a0his best game\u00a0of the season, hauling in all six passes thrown to him and finishing with 158 yards receiving. That puts the second-year\u00a0receiver at 1,056 yards and makes him the second 1,000 yard pass catcher on the team after KeeSean Johnson reached the mark last week.<\/p>\n
Meyers’ showing included one of the key plays of the game — a 66-yard touchdown on the first play of the fourth quarter that put Saskatchewan ahead 20-3. He\u00a0explained how things played out on what would end up as the game-winning touchdown, beginning with recognizing the zero blitz Ottawa used on the play.<\/p>\n
\u201cPre snap, I knew that Trevor [Harris] and I were on the same page, that’s something that we practice, that’s\u00a0hours and countless hours of his experience and of us being in the film room and on the field,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen it’s time for us to make a play, that’s the\u00a0result you guys get. That’s what happens when you have a veteran,\u00a0experienced quarterback and that’s\u00a0poise made for the moment. It’s my job to\u00a0not leave him out there and do my part.\u201d<\/p>\n
A major theme heading into the game was getting off to a fast start, and that\u2019s exactly what Saskatchewan did, with the defence holding Ottawa scoreless on the game\u2019s opening possession before Trevor Harris engineered a 12-play, 76-yard drive that ended with A.J. Ouellette scoring from a yard out.<\/p>\n
The Riders defence did their thing from there, eventually finishing with three interceptions. The biggest came in the second quarter when Antoine Brooks Jr. — playing strong-side linebacker after C.J. Reavis was moved to safety — picked off a pass intended for Geno Lewis and went 85 yards for the pick-six. That\u00a0touchdown was the first of his career.<\/p>\n
Brooks Jr. was quick to give credit to defensive back\u00a0Demarcus Fields for his call on the play, saying Fields wanted Brooks Jr. to use his skill with lateral movement\u00a0to keep low and close in on any receivers in his range.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m real good at sideways bursts,\u00a0going side-to-side and he\u00a0felt comfortable with me shooting the low man, so I shot the low man, and that\u2019s all she wrote,\u201d Brooks Jr. said. \u201cI really appreciate my brother\u00a0for trusting me. Me and him had a whole year and some change that we\u2019ve played together and our chemistry together is\u00a0probably nothing you can find anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as things were going after Meyers\u2019 fourth-quarter score, Ottawa wasn\u2019t done just yet. Back-up quarterback Dustin Crum engineered an 11-play, 60-yard drive that ended with a third-down gamble touchdown pass to Justin Hardy.<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan\u2019s next possession drove down to the Ottawa five before nearly ending in disaster when Harris was sacked and fumbled,\u00a0Bryce Carter picked\u00a0the ball out of the air and saw\u00a0nothing but daylight between himself and the Riders end zone. He\u2019d rumble all the way down to the 17 before Ouellette — who had been blocking on the play — ran\u00a0him down for the touchdown-saving tackle.<\/p>\n
That play drew rave reviews from the Riders’ head coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncredibly selfless,\u201d Mace said. \u201cI\u00a0didn’t really know what to say to the team other than just scream his name because I thought that play right there is the epitome of the culture in his locker room,\u00a0no quit. For him to stand there and eat zero blitzes and then also go and make that play on their turnover to prevent the touchdown, hell of a play,\u00a0hell of a play by A.J.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Roughriders now turn their attention to Week 19 and the Toronto Argonauts, who will be at Mosaic Stadium on Friday, October\u00a010. Kickoff is 7 p.m., and you can catch all the action on the 620 CKRM\u00a0Rider Broadcast Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meyers scores game-winning touchdown in fourth quarter as Riders hold on for 20-13 victory OTTAWA — As the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-188865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188865","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=188865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}