After five CFL seasons in Ottawa and four days at Saskatchewan Roughriders training camp, global linebacker Tyron Vrede was happy to lean into his new club\u2019s sense of stability.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I was in Ottawa and there was a lot of turnover,\u201d Vrede said in an interview after practice Wednesday at Saskatoon\u2019s Griffiths Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was not a lot of times that we had a lot of the same guys for a long time, whether it be coaching staff, GM or head coach and I think that\u2019s probably the biggest difference here is you feel like there\u2019s been something in place for a long time. It\u2019s been building \u2026 and I think that would probably be the biggest difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vrede, born and raised in the Netherlands, signed with the Roughriders as a free agent in February after recording 41 defensive tackles, 35 more on special teams, one sack and one forced fumble over 55 games with the Ottawa RedBlacks.<\/p>\n
Not too bad for a guy who played soccer as a child and was first introduced to the North American version of football with the Madden 2000 video game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got introduced to the game by a friend of mine and at the same time my mom\u2019s friend bought me Madden (on) the Playstation,\u201d said Vrede. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what the game really was and I started playing it and really liked it and simultaneously started playing at the local club and I \u2026 always wanted to go to the (United) States and I was like what better way to do it than with American football.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fast forward a few years of carrying baggage at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and bouncing around the American college system before landing at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, plus his time in Ottawa, and Vrede is looking forward to the competition for a starting role in Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the biggest thing is it\u2019s just a really together team,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously a lot of the guys came back from last year. Really competitive too. We like to compete here and just (have) a really good bond, and guys going hard. We\u2019re all trying to do our best and make the team and make the team a better place because we\u2019re in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really, really like the guys in the room that we have in the linebacker room and everybody else. The coaching staff is honest about competing, making sure we\u2019re in with the details and the small things. It\u2019s been good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After five CFL seasons in Ottawa and four days at Saskatchewan Roughriders training camp, global linebacker Tyron Vrede…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674529,"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-674881","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\/674881","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=674881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}