All systems go for veteran quarterback as 2026 CFL campaign set to kick off Saturday night at Mosaic Stadium<\/p>\n
REGINA — The most unusual start to a season in recent Saskatchewan Roughriders history is getting closer and closer to the rearview mirror.<\/p>\n
The team is back on the field at Mosaic Stadium this week after spending the last seven days at home, thanks to receiving their first bye of the season in Week 1. All told, the Green and White will have had three weeks off when they face the B.C. Lions in their first Canadian Football League game of meaning since winning the Grey Cup last November.<\/p>\n
Safe to say, everyone is champing at the bit, and no one more so than quarterback Trevor Harris. The veteran pivot spoke to the media after\u00a0practice and touched on how unorthodox the start of the campaign has been .<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, very strange,\u201d he began. \u201cYou get into a nice rhythm during training camp, and then it’s like, \u2018hey, great camp, guys\u2019. You usually roll right into the regular season, but this time it’s like, \u2018see you next week\u2019 and it\u2019s \u2018whoa, wait, what?\u2019 So you come back out here and it\u2019s get the cobwebs out yesterday and a little bit today. But we’re fired up that it’s finally game week, and I guess on the positive note we only have two bye weeks the rest of the year, so only two weeks without Rider games for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
The long, early layoff might come as a concern, but considering the Lions are in the same place thanks to the World Cup being held at B.C. Place, Harris feels they\u2019re on an equal footing. The key now is just to be as prepared as possible without getting too far into it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the bye week, it was just business as usual, I came in to get some work in and watch some film. But the thing is you have to be careful you don’t watch too much film, you go into these bye weeks, and a lot of times if you get to a certain point, you watch a little too much film, you can start overthinking things. But I feel like we’re in a good spot right now, and we’ve got to have some great meetings, a great night of film watch tonight and get back at it tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for how he\u2019s feeling physically, the news is nothing but good for the 40-year-old pivot as he heads into his 14th season in the CFL. That\u2019s in no small part due to a strict off-season regimen that put Harris in a solid position to perform heading into camp, and the extra week off only helped in that regard.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times you don’t know that your arm’s a little bit tired from training camp because you just keep plugging away every day,\u201d Harris said. \u201cBut it’s a good way to get your arm in shape, and getting that week off was a good time for me to recharge and be able to get the ball downfield a little bit better. So, shoot, we’re fired up, I’m fired up with where I’m at in terms of physically how I feel.\u201d<\/p>\n
That only adds to the excitement of hitting the field and playing for real.<\/p>\n
\u201cThird year in the offence with a tremendous play caller like [offensive coordinator Marc] Mueller, the sky’s the limit for this group, and we’ve just got to make sure that we’re pressing on the gas pedal every day,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n
As Harris touched on, with so much familiarity with the system among the team’s veterans, there\u2019s a lot of confidence that things will come together quickly, even if other teams have a bit of a jump on them in playing time.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times there’s certain nuances in plays that are different, and so you’re always growing and learning in those things,\u201d Harris said. \u201cBut in terms of the base plays, the things that we’ve done in the past that we’ll continue to do, we’ve got a great feel for one another in terms of how we like things done and whatnot. So heading into a season we know we have those things, but also we’ve got some new things that are in the works. Coach Mueller’s always evolving, as the great o coordinators always are, and we’re really pushing the envelope to do some new things. We\u2019ll see how it works out come game time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Roughriders and Lions are set to do battle on Saturday, June 13, with kick-off at 5 p.m. at Mosaic Stadium. It will be a special night, as the team will hold their Grey Cup title celebration and unveil the newest championship banner. The Rider Broadcast Network<\/a> will have all the news and views beginning at 2 p.m., with Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder bringing you the game call at 5 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All systems go for veteran quarterback as 2026 CFL campaign set to kick off Saturday night at Mosaic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-729011","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-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729011","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=729011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}