Saskatchewan Roughriders rookie of the year, Grey Cup champion \u2013 not a bad debut season for 6-foot-7 left tackle Payton Collins.<\/p>\n
So naturally, in trying to follow it, Collins is working to forget it.<\/p>\n
Wait, what?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big message this year in training camp so far has been don\u2019t even worry about the past,\u201d Collins told SportsCage after practice on Day 2 of training camp Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew year, new team. Our excellence standard, we need to improve on. Even though we won the Grey Cup last year, there\u2019s still a lot of things each and every person can improve on. And as a unit, as an offence, as an O-line, as a team, we all have things we can improve on to keep putting ourselves in good positions to win football games.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collins, who also holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Eastern Kentucky University, dressed for 12 regular-season games with Saskatchewan in 2025.<\/p>\n
Come playoff time he was part of an O-line unit that did not allow a sack in the CFL\u2019s West Division final against the B.C. Lions, and was named a starter for the Riders\u2019 25-17 win over the Montreal Alouettes in the 112th Grey Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Payton, man I\u2019d love to say I\u2019ve seen growth but he\u2019s been honestly excellent since his rookie year. Outside maybe the first couple weeks, he matured in a heartbeat and that\u2019s just how he is,\u201d head coach Corey Mace told reporters Monday. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a rep in the game or a practice it\u2019s going to look the same. He plays at a high level constantly so we\u2019re still seeing the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps in the same vein, what Collins sees is a roster where his own success really belongs to others, and also where his job is on the line every single day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so many great vets on this team, especially on the O-line like (Jacob) Brammer, (Logan) Ferland, Yoshi (Jemarcus Hardrick), and even players who were on the team last year like (Trevon) Tate and Sean (McEwen). Coach Ed (Harrison) is a great offensive line coach,\u201d said Collins.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe staff and vets have really taught me how to be a pro and how to work every day to earn your spot on the team,\u201d said Collins. \u201cNothing\u2019s for granted and every night when I go to sleep I gotta wake up and earn my spot on this team.\u201d<\/p>\n
This offseason that included making sure he was an active part of the offseason group chat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all stayed in touch a lot, whether it was workout videos or texting about things or watching film together,\u201d Collins continued. \u201cA big thing for us this offseason was how fast can we hit the ground running coming into training camp. So we came out to Regina early just to get our chemistry going. So I feel that was a big thing this offseason was just kind of coming into training camp as a cohesive unit already.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saskatchewan Roughriders rookie of the year, Grey Cup champion \u2013 not a bad debut season for 6-foot-7 left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[3878,49,48,521,522,520,3290,4398,27684,27683,1893,4401,27682,4400,4399,82],"class_list":["post-665220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-agriculture","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-contests","tag-country-music","tag-gx94","tag-manitoba-news","tag-radio","tag-rider-radio","tag-saskatchewan-news","tag-saskatchewan-roughriders","tag-saskatchewan-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665220","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=665220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}