CFL legend Darian Durant put\u00a0responsibility on\u00a0Stampeders’ quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. and head coach Dave Dickenson for\u00a0poor clock management against the B.C. Lions as Calgary lost the West Semi-Final 33-30.<\/p>\n
“If he were younger, then I would say the coach has to be in his ear a little bit, maybe the coach’s fault.\u00a0But V.A.’s such a vet in this league and he’s been through pretty much every single scenario, so you have to give him the majority of the blame —\u00a0he’s out there on the field,” Durant explained on the SportsCage.<\/p>\n
“He’s a veteran guy, he should know the time, the situation, and what’s going on. With Dave being a quarterback as well, they both should know exactly what’s going on.\u00a0Put it on them both, they’re both quarterbacks, they both have played at a high level, so let’s put it on both of those guys.”<\/p>\n
Late in the second quarter,\u00a0the Stamps were in field goal range at the 19-yard line with time winding down. Adams Jr. scrambled to his right and completed a pass to Tevin Jones for 13 yards as time expired\u00a0and the first half ended.\u00a0The Stampeders\u00a0missed out on three points in that situation and lost\u00a0the game 33-30. After the loss, Adams Jr. <\/a>answered questions\u00a0about\u00a0time management.<\/p>\n “That’s on me,” Adams Jr. said. “That’s bad management on me.”<\/p>\n Durant explained how the head coach and offensive coordinator can communicate with a\u00a0quarterback through the headset.\u00a0From his experience, he\u00a0cannot understand how\u00a0Dickenson and Adams Jr. mismanaged the situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n “After every play, the coaches get a time slot. I’m unsure exactly how many seconds it takes, but immediately after the play, coaches can communicate with the quarterback. There definitely should have been some communication there about the time, situation, what they’re trying to do, what the goals are for this drive,” Durant said.<\/p>\n “Even some coaches take it as far as saying, ‘You can’t take a sack here or make sure you throw it away if something isn’t there.’ They go into detail about what you need to do in every situation. There’s definitely communication between the quarterback and the play caller.\u00a0Sometimes you can say that this is inexcusable.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Lions advanced to take on\u00a0the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the\u00a0West Final. Durant knows what the Green and White have to do to succeed.<\/p>\n “I start with Dedrick Mills in the run game.\u00a0I’m looking at the forecast here, it’s calling for some snow flurries and\u00a0it may be a little bit icy on the ground.\u00a0Dedrick Mills went for over 100 yards on the Lions last week,\u00a0I think that’s a good sign for the Riders and A.J. Ouellette that there may be some holes in this B.C. Lion front. I know with [Mathieu] Betts up front they love to get after the passer, but I’m not sure how physical they are up the middle,” Durant said.<\/p>\n “Then to the secondary,\u00a0V.A. showed that you can go downfield and attack this Lions secondary. In the season, the secondary was giving up big play after big play for seven to eight weeks. If the Riders can find some opportunities, find B.C. and some coverages that may seem to be favourable for their match-ups, then I think they can exploit this B.C. Lions secondary.”<\/p>\n Adams Jr. finished the West Semi-Final\u00a0against the Lions\u00a0completing 23-of-33 passes for 334 passing yards and two touchdowns. As for Mills, he rushed the ball\u00a014 times for 111 yards, averaging 7.9 par carry.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the East Final, the Montreal Alouettes\u00a0travel to Hamilton to take on the Tiger-Cats.\u00a0Durant explains who he wants to see out of the East if the Riders make it to the Grey Cup.<\/p>\n “I would say Hamilton —\u00a0I think everyone would agree with me in that case. The Riders pretty much handled Hamilton pretty easily this year. One of their losses, I think they split against Montreal, if I’m not mistaken. Noel Thorpe is a hell of a defensive coordinator. We’re sitting here speaking on Davis Alexander and that offence, but we can’t forget about Noel Thorpe and what he’s able to do with these young guys defensively,” Durant said\u00a0<\/p>\n “In my opinion, he’s a mastermind at game-planning. Montreal is a tough team to play for the Riders, they match up well with the Riders. You asked me who I would rather see and who I think the fans would rather see,\u00a0I’m sure everyone will say the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.<\/p>\n During the 2025 regular season, Saskatchewan\u00a0beat\u00a0Hamilton twice,\u00a028-23 in\u00a0Week 2 and 29-9\u00a0in Week 11.\u00a0The Roughriders beat the Alouettes in\u00a0Montreal 34-6 in\u00a0Week 9\u00a0but lost 48-31\u00a0in\u00a0Week 15 at Mosaic Stadium\u00a0— McLeod Bethel-Thompson started both games at quarterback for the Als.<\/p>\n Catch the\u00a0West Final between the Lions and Riders with Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk, and Wes Cates bringing you the pre-game show at 2:30 p.m. Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder have the game call at 5:30 p.m. Listen or watch our extensive coverage on the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network<\/a>.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CFL legend Darian Durant put\u00a0responsibility on\u00a0Stampeders’ quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. and head coach Dave Dickenson for\u00a0poor clock management…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,121817,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-263509","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-saskatchewan-roughriderscalgary-stampedershamilton-tiger-catsbc-lionsvernon-adams-jrdarian-durantdave-dickenson","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263509","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=263509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}