Chad Kelly\u2019s offence puts up 10 points in each quarter, go on to 40-34 victory at Mosaic Stadium<\/p>\n
REGINA — After pulling a couple of games out of the fire to start the Canadian Football League season, the Saskatchewan Roughriders finally ran into a blaze they couldn\u2019t control on Friday night at Mosaic Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Toronto Argonauts came up with big plays at the perfect time, took advantage of a couple\u00a0incredibly untimely Saskatchewan turnovers and had an all-around outstanding showing from quarterback Chad Kelly on their way to a 40-34\u00a0victory.<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan falls to 2-1 and drop into second place in the West Division behind the unbeaten Edmonton Elks, while Toronto improves to 2-1 and are in a three-way tie with Montreal and Hamilton for first in the East.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take long for Toronto to make a statement, as a 61-yard run by Samuel Hicks on the very first offensive play set the tone for the game. The Argos would build a 10-0 lead in the first quarter —\u00a0including a 68-yard punt return touchdown by Janarion Grant — and get an end zone interception as a punctuation mark on Saskatchewan\u2019s slow start.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think obviously early we didn’t take care of the things that we talked about against an explosive team in Toronto, be it offence or the return game,”\u00a0head coach Corey Mace said on the Rider Broadcast Network after the contest. \u201cYou saw their explosiveness early in both realms and we were\u00a0always trying to play catch up. Then when we needed one side of the ball to stand up, we couldn’t and vice versa. So not complimentary\u00a0and a lot of mistakes, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thing is, for as rough as things went overall, Saskatchewan still managed to stay in the game throughout. That was once again in no small part to the play of quarterback Trevor Harris, who completed 34 of 43 passes for 409 yards and two touchdowns, with the early pick the first and only he\u2019s thrown this season.<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan did get things going in the second quarter with majors from KeeSean Johnson and Quali Conley — the first of his career in his first CFL game — but as was the case all game, Toronto had an answer.<\/p>\n
This time, it was a two-play, 31-second drive that ended in a Tyler Kahmann touchdown on the final play of the first\u00a0half, the second time in as many games Saskatchewan had given up a huge, demoralizing play to close out the first 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s about being detail oriented to doing our job,\u201d Mace said of Toronto\u2019s ability to respond. \u201cThey’re the ones to start fast this time, but then what’s the reaction for us? Those plays all came down to details and a lack of attention and whether that’s a player or it’s us as coaches, we got to do a better job coaching it. So it’s inward. We all got to look at the tape and get better. Players, coaches —\u00a0everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toronto went up 30-17 midway through the third quarter on a major from Kelly, and while that could have been the first nail in the coffin for Saskatchewan, the Riders battled back. Tommy Stevens finished off a 10-play, 90-yard drive to make it a 30-24 Toronto lead late in the third quarter and a touchdown from Rosetown product Daniel Wiebe with 9:37 left in the game got Saskatchewan within a two\u00a033-31.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will say I’m super proud of the boys for battling all the way to the dang end,\u201d Mace said. \u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0got to clean it up, no doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were some positives for Saskatchewan\u00a0— when Wiebe came in midway through the contest after an injury to Sam Emilus, he\u2019d go on to have a solid outing with a pair of catches for 48 yards and the touchdown as well as a couple of decent\u00a0returns. Slotback D\u2019Sean Mimbs was a force as a blocker and had a couple of catches for 13 yards, and Jaxon Ford had a solid showing at safety, coming up with five tackles.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach of those guys made some big plays for us,\u201d Mace said. \u201cI know they worked their tails off and they\u2019ve proven that they can play at this level. So whether it’s next week or down the line, we’re going to need these guys. So I’m proud of them. They had a good showing.\u201d<\/p>\n
KeeSean Johnson ended up leading the offence with 10 catches for 112 yards and the aforementioned touchdown, and seeing the general success of the offence\u00a0had him confident the team will be able to turn things around quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe feeling is the same,\u201d he said of how the team will respond \u201cHard work, coming to the building with the same attitude as we had the first two weeks. Coming in with the same attitude, same work ethic and\u00a0get back to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Roughriders are back in action on Friday, July 3 when they travel to Ottawa to face the Redblacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chad Kelly\u2019s offence puts up 10 points in each quarter, go on to 40-34 victory at Mosaic Stadium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-764432","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\/764432","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=764432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}