Saskatchewan Roughriders coach Corey Mace continues to publicly back kicker Alex Hale amid struggles, but that support is sounding more tepid by the week.<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan Roughriders coach Corey Mace continues to publicly back kicker Alex Hale amid struggles, but that support is sounding more tepid by the week.<\/p>\n
When asked after Tuesday\u2019s practice if the Riders were thinking of bringing in another kicker, Mace responded in the affirmative before pumping Hale\u2019s tires.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, you always look at all those different options. We\u2019ll see,\u201d Mace said. \u201cUltimately, we\u2019re going to have to send somebody out there to get the job done. Right now, Alex has been here and doing that. I\u2019m going to have faith in him to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we bring somebody in for competition, we\u2019ll always do what\u2019s best for the team. But Alex is more than capable of doing it. We\u2019ve seen it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hale has missed a field-goal attempt in three straight games and in five of seven contests overall. The CFL rookie is 12-for-17 on the season.<\/p>\n
Hale pulled a 42-yard attempt wide left in the third quarter of Saskatchewan\u2019s 28-26 win at Edmonton last Saturday, in what was his only three-point try of the game. He\u2019s now 1-for-5 on kicks from 40 yards or more.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the last stat that sticks out and Mace was asked directly about it on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople would say our kicking was a struggle last year, and it ended up OK for us. We\u2019ll see,\u201d he said. \u201cWith Alex, we\u2019ve got faith in the kid. He\u2019s done some really good things for us in the totality of stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, yeah, he\u2019s got to make his kicks. That\u2019s just everybody doing their job, and he knows that. It\u2019s no secret. But I know he\u2019s working his tail off at it, so we\u2019ll keep rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hale converted two point-after kicks earlier in the Edmonton game, but his missed field goal was his last potential scoring boot of the night.<\/p>\n
The Riders went for two points after each of their last two touchdowns. The first time they were ahead by four points and were unsuccessful to end the third quarter. The second time they led by six points and were successful, padding their advantage to eight points\u00a0with 6:20 remaining in regulation.<\/p>\n
Mace said postgame that Hale\u2019s miss\u00a0and overall inconsistency had nothing to do with going for two twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last one would have been able to put us up two scores,\u201d he said last Saturday. \u201cThe other one would have been able to put us up six in that situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was strictly just our first strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few days later, doubled down on that mindset. He elaborated, stating that one of Hale\u2019s long misses earlier in the season\u00a0\u2013 a 47-yard try in Week 4 that was returned for a touchdown \u2013 wasn\u2019t his kicker\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what it looks like, but some of these games have been a little bit crazy,\u201d Mace said. \u201cThe one in Calgary that burned us before half; that was my fault. I shouldn\u2019t have even sent him. The conditions were terrible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat alone has made me think about certain things \u2013 what\u2019s happening as far as the conditions and the game. We\u2019ve (also) got a really good punter. We\u2019ve been able to keep guys down there. Our cover teams are good. Sometimes we\u2019ve gone for it. Our offence looks good. So, there are a lot of factors that go into it. It\u2019s not just sending the kicker out there. (It\u2019s) more of decisions that I\u2019ve made in the past that wasn\u2019t very smart that hurt the team on my behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saskatchewan Roughriders coach Corey Mace continues to publicly back kicker Alex Hale amid struggles, but that support is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-846667","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\/846667","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=846667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}