Veteran ball carrier had 80 yards total offence in return to field in B.C. on Friday night<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan Roughriders running back A.J. Ouellette was hoping for a triumphant return to the field against the B.C. Lions on Friday night.<\/p>\n
And while things went well for the veteran ball carrier on a personal level, the triumphant part fell a touchdown short at B.C. Place.<\/p>\n
The Riders put together a fourth quarter rally but were unable to complete the comeback, going on to a 31-24 defeat that saw Saskatchewan fall to 8-6 on the season.<\/p>\n
Ouellette spoke to the Rider Broadcast Network\u2019s Luc Mullinder after the contest and expressed a bit of disappointment with what felt could have been a far better showing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI should have had well over 100 yards, it felt like I left some yards out there,\u201d he said. \u201cThe line played well, so I have to get the iPad loaded up and watch some film.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ouellette finished with 80 yards of total offence, getting 19 carries for 77 yards and having a single catch for three yards.<\/p>\n
The contest was the first for the former 1,000-yard rusher since Week 8 against the Edmonton Eskimos, where he suffered a right knee injury, Ouellette nearly returned for the Labour Day Classic rematch, but ended up waiting through the bye week to play against the Lions. He played with a knee brace but still looked like his old self, especially on a handful of plays where he survived first contact and stiff-armed his way to extra yards.<\/p>\n
So some wear and tear, but nothing he isn\u2019t used to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt good, man,\u201d he said. \u201cIt sucks that I sat for so long, the body’s feeling good and still couldn’t come through with the win.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for what he saw on the field with the running game, Ouellette admitted there were some situations where the team could have executed a more cohesive play.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to correct some mistakes, there were some communication issues that I saw on the field,\u201d Ouellette said. \u201cIt doesn’t matter if we have the wrong call, if we’re all running the wrong call, we’re going to execute it well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ouellette also touched on how the team will go about addressing any onfield issues they may have.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the majority of it, you need everybody thinking as one and that’s the most important thing when it comes to a run game,\u201d Ouellette said. \u201cYou get all five up front and the running back thinking as one, you’re going to have a deadly run game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo luckily for me, during special teams, I can sit in with the o-line and kind of tell them what I’m thinking,\u201d he added. \u201cWe got some things fixed out there, but we had some new plays that we haven’t run in a game yet. So I’m excited to see what kind of adjustments we can do with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan will now have a week off to prepare for a crucial Week 18 matchup with the Calgary Stampeders on Friday night at Mosaic Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran ball carrier had 80 yards total offence in return to field in B.C. on Friday night Saskatchewan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":912428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-912427","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\/912427","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=912427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}