highest-paid Global player in CFL history<\/a> to hitting the unemployment line.<\/p>\n\u201cI would say this has probably been the toughest football season I\u2019ve ever had in my life,\u201d Baldonado said.<\/p>\n
Luckily for him, the Riders came calling right away. Baldonado had a new contract in just three days.<\/p>\n
Since then, he\u2019s appeared in five games while wearing his familiar green and white uniform and picked up six tackles.<\/p>\n
He feels like a new version of himself after his setback with cellar-dwelling Redblacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was out for four weeks,\u201d Baldonado said. \u201cI made it back earlier, which I really shouldn\u2019t have. But I wanted to help the team get a win. I\u2019m just a big positive guy. I always stay positive. I always try to get better. I always try to beat the man in front of me. That\u2019s how I approach every game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The native of Rome, Italy was already a key part of a championship team in Saskatchewan, but there\u2019s been a noticeable improvement to his skill set.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got really good hands. He\u2019s a great pass rusher. He\u2019s got good understanding of the position and football intelligence of what\u2019s coming at him,\u201d Riders coach Corey Mace said. \u201cWe used to get on him about his run game needing to be better and not just chasing sacks. The back end of last year and this year, he\u2019s been really good in addressing that and making it a priority for him. Good football player.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next step is becoming a great football player.<\/p>\n
Baldonado caused tons of havoc around Montreal Alouettes quarterbacks Davis Alexander and Dustin Crum over the last two games, yet he was unable to wrap up either guy.<\/p>\n
The failed sacks have been hard to watch during film study.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes me want to cry,\u201d Baldonado said. \u201cThe last two weeks I missed about five of them. I\u2019ve got to give credit to my opponents, some really shifty quarterbacks. I was right there on the tackle and didn\u2019t get it done. I\u2019ve got to get better on my finish and make more plays to help the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard because, as a D lineman, most people don\u2019t really see it, but in less than three seconds you have to beat an O lineman, plus you have to get the quarterback down that sees you and is trying to escape from you. And in practice you can\u2019t hit the quarterback, so you can\u2019t really get better at that in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baldonado said there are ways to get better like working on running through tackles. He\u2019s going to keep working at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll never reach it,\u201d Baldonado said, \u201cbut we\u2019re just going to strive for perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n
It only helps that he\u2019s in better health and in a better place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The defensive lineman is at home in Saskatchewan and trying to make the best of it after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":940993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-940992","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\/940992","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=940992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}