From coaches and personnel to the rulebook and the play clock, so much of what was old is new again for the Saskatchewan Roughriders as they finalize preparations for their first CFL preseason game of 2026 today against the Calgary Stampeders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of operations that some of the new coaches haven\u2019t had to do before,\u201d head coach Corey Mace told the team\u2019s radio play-by-play announcer Dave Thomas on Saturday. \u201cObviously Micah (Johnson, defensive line coach) and (special teams assistant Jeff) Stusek, he\u2019s helped with training camp before but just being more dialed in on that and then obviously with the rule changes coming in, new for everybody so it\u2019s good for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arguably the biggest change, for all teams, heading into this season is the introduction of a continuous 35-second play clock, replacing the traditional 20-second play clock that would only begin once whistled in by an official.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s game will be the first chance for both the Riders and the Stamps to experience that wrinkle in real time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been practicing with it all camp so we have an idea, but ultimately it\u2019s out of our control running that,\u201d said Mace. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s faster, maybe it\u2019s slower, but at least we\u2019ve had plenty of reps in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other changes for this season include a modified rouge and the elimination of ties.<\/p>\n
As for the end result today, yes important, but not the be-all end-all either.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to see it executed versus somebody else and when it\u2019s live, so that does hold obviously a lot of weight but we\u2019re evaluating everything,\u201d said Mace. \u201cReps on the field, how they are in the meeting rooms, how they treat the people in the cafeterias, it\u2019s everything, but certainly yes the game is very important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From coaches and personnel to the rulebook and the play clock, so much of what was old is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677438,"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-677437","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\/677437","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=677437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}