{"id":345182,"date":"2025-12-14T18:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T18:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/345182\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T18:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T18:23:07","slug":"if-im-not-here-ill-be-on-my-couch-riders-qb-tommy-stevens-reveals-why-he-re-signed-with-saskatchewan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/345182\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018If I&#8217;m not here, I&#8217;ll be on my couch\u2019: Riders\u2019 QB Tommy Stevens reveals why he re-signed with Saskatchewan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tommy Stevens enjoyed his first year with the Saskatchewan Roughriders so much that he made sure to get a deal done so he did not need to go to CFL free agency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I told [Corey] Mace during exit interviews that there&#8217;s nowhere else I want to play, there&#8217;s nobody else I want to play for,&#8221; Stevens said on the SportsCage. &#8220;If I&#8217;m not here, I&#8217;ll be on my couch. So I was like, let&#8217;s find a way to get this done.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Both the Riders and Stevens did not waste time,\u00a0it was announced on Friday,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportscage.com\/roughriders\/tommy-stevens-stays-saskatchewan-roughriders-lock-in-short-yardage-specialist-for-two-more-years-11586950\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">December 5 <\/a>he\u00a0signed a two-year extension with the team.<\/p>\n<p>The six-foot-four, 245-pound quarterback suited up in\u00a014 games for Saskatchewan during the 2025 regular season.\u00a0He was primarily used in short-yardage situations as\u00a0he rushed the football 50 times for 183 yards and five touchdowns. Out of\u00a036 times\u00a0the Riders needed a first down in\u00a0short yardage situations, he converted\u00a033.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I felt like, honestly, this was a down year for me, really. If you look at some of the stats and what I&#8217;ve done in the past, I&#8217;m coming off a\u00a010\u00a0touchdown year\u00a0the year before,&#8221; Stevens recalled. &#8220;I&#8217;m still hungry, I still feel like I have a lot to prove. Incredibly grateful, I&#8217;m glad for the opportunity,\u00a0I&#8217;m glad that the organization believes in me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stevens has been in the CFL since 2022,\u00a0he initially started with the Calgary Stampeders. He stayed with the Stamps until 2024 and left for Saskatchewan in free agency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m thankful for the memories that I made at that place, but we lost to Calgary at home (24-10), and then we went to Calgary, and we got beaten there (32-15). If we had a low point in the season, that was the lowest part of the season. I remember looking across the sideline,\u00a0I remember seeing them celebrate\u00a0like they had won the Grey Cup.\u00a0I never for a second did I think, man, maybe I made the wrong decision,&#8221; Stevens said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Maybe I should have stayed, that never crossed my mind ever. I knew being with the Riders, I knew being with Corey Mace, and I knew being with all my teammates here,\u00a0I knew that this was the perfect place for me &#8212;\u00a0I loved what we were able to accomplish.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Riders finished the 2025 CFL\u00a0regular season season with a record of 12-6 and finished first in the\u00a0West Division. Saskatchewan\u00a0carried\u00a0that moment to the 112th Grey Cup, where the Green and White\u00a0took on the Montreal Alouettes, which they defeated 25-17. That win for Stevens got him the first Grey Cup in\u00a0his career, and he tied the record for the most touchdowns by a Rider in a Grey Cup game with two. The other two Riders that Stevens shares the record with are Geroy Simon and Kory Sheets from 2013.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had an idea of what it would be like,\u00a0I&#8217;d felt overall, I don&#8217;t necessarily know the support, yes, passion,\u00a0I&#8217;d felt the passion from Riders Nation all year. I was able to get a sense of what this really meant to the city of Regina, but the entire province,&#8221; Stevens said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For a guy that didn&#8217;t grow up in Regina or grow up in Saskatchewan or really know a whole lot about the place until I got here, I had an idea of what it would be like.\u00a0I had\u00a0my sense of it from the season, but it was above and beyond even my expectations, man.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Besides reflecting on the\u00a0season and\u00a0Grey Cup, Stevens, who is from Indianapolis, Indiana, detailed one off-season from 2023 which\u00a0made him cautious about\u00a0Canada\u2019s winters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the 2023 off-season, I stayed in Calgary.\u00a0I remember asking some of my buddies, my girlfriend, and my family, all that,\u00a0I was like, &#8216;Hey, how cold is it going to get out here?&#8217; I didn&#8217;t know that this was a thing,\u00a0I didn&#8217;t know that it got more than negative 20\u00b0F. I thought that was extreme, right? So they&#8217;re talking about negative 40,&#8221; Stevens said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m like, &#8216;Man, is this Siberia?&#8217; I didn&#8217;t know it got this cold. I didn&#8217;t have a winter coat, I&#8217;m going to double up on hoodies. I&#8217;m like, &#8216;Hey, if I was stranded outside, hypothetically, how long would I have?&#8217; I don&#8217;t know, 20 to\u00a030 minutes. 20 or 30 minutes! What do you mean?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stevens also added another story about the severity of Canadian winters in 2023 and\u00a0plugging in his\u00a0car.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re like, &#8216;Hey, why don&#8217;t you plug your car in?&#8217; I&#8217;m like, &#8216;It&#8217;s not electric,\u00a0that&#8217;s why I don&#8217;t plug it in.&#8217; What do you mean? They&#8217;re like, &#8216;No, plug your car in, your battery&#8217;s going to die.&#8217;\u00a0I&#8217;m like, &#8216;OK.&#8217;\u00a0I didn&#8217;t know that was a thing,&#8221; Stevens explained.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I guess I&#8217;ll have to go buy an adapter. Like, no, dude, you have one. You have to dig in there and find it. I was like, what? This is all very confusing to me. I didn&#8217;t notice a thing.&#8221;<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tommy Stevens enjoyed his first year with the Saskatchewan Roughriders so much that he made sure to get&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,150565,82],"class_list":["post-345182","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-cflsaskatchewan-roughriderscalgary-stampederscorey-macetommy-stevenscfl-grey-c-up","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345182","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=345182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}