{"id":569030,"date":"2026-03-29T17:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T17:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/569030\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T17:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T17:17:08","slug":"saskatchewan-roughriders-have-younger-defensive-ends-who-can-be-outstanding-in-cfl-corey-mace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/569030\/","title":{"rendered":"Saskatchewan Roughriders have younger defensive ends who can be ‘outstanding’ in CFL: Corey Mace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Photo courtesy: Bob Butrym\/RFB Sport Photography<\/p>\n

Despite being a former defensive lineman and defensive line coach, Corey Mace prioritizes team success as a head coach with the Saskatchewan Roughriders over retaining players at his favourite position.<\/p>\n

Both starting defensive ends from the 2025 Grey Cup championship team have moved on. Malik Carney<\/a> and Habakkuk Baldonado<\/a> signed high-priced contracts with the Edmonton Elks and Ottawa Redblacks, respectively, in CFL free agency. Veteran NFL and CFL pass rusher Shane Ray seems to be done with professional football.<\/p>\n

Those departures leave an open spot at one defensive end position opposite 32-year-old veteran James Vaughters<\/a>, who signed a one-year contract worth $165,000 in hard money with the Riders after playing for Winnipeg in 2025. Vaughters has a relationship with Mace from their time together in Calgary with the Stampeders in 2017 and 2018.<\/p>\n

Aaron Patrick<\/a>, who dressed as Saskatchewan\u2019s third defensive end in the 112th Grey Cup, would appear to be a front-runner to start at defensive end. However, Mace stated it\u2019s a \u201cvery open\u201d competition. Chico Bennett Jr. dressed in two regular-season games last year for the Green and White, while Justin Weaver<\/a>, Marcus Haynes<\/a>, Desmond Evans<\/a>, Sundiata Anderson<\/a>, Ty French<\/a> and Kevin Orange Jr. are rookie CFLers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as the defensive line is concerned, some guys become stars in the league after one season, two seasons, and you didn\u2019t know them because they were somewhere else\u00a0or they\u2019re waiting in the wings. We feel like we do have some younger guys who are ready for bigger roles, who can be outstanding players in\u00a0this league,\u201d Mace said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, having the wherewithal, the football ops side with the ability to go and find really good players, putting trust in our coaching staff to be able to get these guys to play and perform at a high level. With that being said,\u00a0the comfort was there. The tutelage with\u00a0Micah [Johnson]\u00a0being around the game for as long as he has and\u00a0myself from a defensive line background,\u00a0we\u2019re going to be\u00a0fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reigning CFL Coach of the Year stated there\u2019s no pencilled-in starter at defensive end<\/a>. Mace credited Jeremy O\u2019Day, Kyle Carson<\/a>, Paul Jones and Larry Dean for finding and signing talented players. He believes the most exciting part about training camp can be unexpected players performing and earning spots on the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what you love about training camp,\u00a0I\u2019m guilty of it, you go into training camp thinking, \u2018OK, we got this taken care of,’\u201d Mace said. \u201cAnd then somebody shows up, and you\u2019re like, \u2018This guy\u2019s got to play for us.\u2019 We\u2019ve got a laundry list of really talented defensive ends. Truthfully, it\u2019s going to be up to them who\u2019s going to be able to take that spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

When training camp opens in Saskatoon on Sunday, May 10, many eyes will be focused on the competition at defensive end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy: Bob Butrym\/RFB Sport Photography Despite being a former defensive lineman and defensive line coach, Corey Mace…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[166835,166836,49,48,7028,521,522,520,60449,218919,68627,182042,218920,218921,218922,10599,45083,55574,24373,82,218923,218924],"class_list":["post-569030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-corey-mace","tag-desmond-evans","tag-grey-cup","tag-james-vaughters","tag-justin-weaver","tag-kevin-orange-jr","tag-marcus-haynes","tag-regina","tag-riders","tag-roughriders","tag-saskatchewan","tag-sports","tag-sundiata-anderson","tag-tymetrius-french"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569030","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=569030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}