Saskatchewan Roughriders legend Darian Durant believes\u00a0after the Calgary Stampeders beat the Green and White for the second time in 2025,\u00a0the hierarchy in the\u00a0West Division has changed.<\/p>\n
“I felt like the past two weeks were\u00a0must-win games for the Riders in order to create that separation from Calgary.\u00a0I’m not going with my heart,\u00a0I’m\u00a0going by what I see on the field:\u00a0Calgary is the best team in the West and the Riders really needed to get these two games to create separation,” Durant said on\u00a0the SportsCage. “This head-to-head battle against Calgary… when I look at the Labour Day classic and the Banjo Bowl, I’m\u00a0looking at it as a split,\u00a0I think Saskatchewan will win at home\u00a0and then Winnipeg will win at home,\u00a0so\u00a0another loss\u00a0puts Calgary in the driver’s seat.”<\/p>\n
Durant thinks\u00a0the Stamps\u00a0will be considered favourites in the rest of their regular season games.<\/p>\n
“I think they’re going to run the table. I\u00a0don’t see a defence flying around like there’s,” Durant explained. “This is\u00a0aside from the way Vernon Adams Jr. is playing.\u00a0That defence, they’re number one in points scored against in the league. Calgary is committed to that run game. You look at other aspects of this team;\u00a0the way they were able to play with two of their best receivers out. Look across the board at this team,\u00a0I think that they’re the best team in the West\u00a0and I think they’ll win the West.”<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan lost its second game this season to the Stampeders 32-15 in Week 12. That match-up was the second time the teams\u00a0faced each other,\u00a0the first\u00a0was in Week 6\u00a0when\u00a0the Riders lost 24-10 at home coming off a bye week.<\/p>\n
“The reason why I say [the Stampeders] may run the table is\u00a0because they know that they have to win every game to win the West,” Durant said. “They’re going to approach every single game as if they’re playing against Saskatchewan or they’re playing for first place\u00a0and they know they own the tiebreaker as well.”<\/p>\n
Durant made sure to highlight how well Calgary’s\u00a0offensive and defensive lines played\u00a0against the Riders. The Stamps\u00a0were able to sack Riders’ quarterback Trevor Harris four times during the game while\u00a0Adams Jr.\u00a0was not sacked once.<\/p>\n
“Football starts in the trenches,\u00a0it\u00a0seems like this Calgary Stampeder offensive and defensive line has Saskatchewan’s number right now. They can’t seem to get much pressure on Vernon Adams defensively and then for the offensive line of Saskatchewan, it seems like they can’t block these guys,” Durant said. “Calgary doesn’t blitz a lot,\u00a0they really didn’t blitz a lot, and they were able to pound Trevor [Harris] to the turf. Once the Riders were in noticeable passing situations, the Calgary defensive line was\u00a0unleashed\u00a0and it seems like they can’t match the physicality of Calgary’s defensive line. I look at it as right now, up front, Calgary’s the better team skill position-wise,\u00a0I think they’re neck and neck, but football is all about the trenches.”<\/p>\n
With this loss against\u00a0the Stampeders, Durant views\u00a0the Green and White’s upcoming games as\u00a0challenging.<\/p>\n
“I think with Saskatchewan having to play Winnipeg three times, and twice over in Winnipeg\u00a0that\u00a0hasn’t been a friendly place to play,\u00a0I hate to say it, but I’m\u00a0counting those as two losses,” Durant said. “Unless there’s nothing at stake at the end of the season, but if there is, it seems like year after year\u00a0whenever it’s all the chips pushed to the middle of the table and you have to play a game either against Winnipeg or in Winnipeg, they always seem to come out on top. I see those two games over in Winnipeg as losses,\u00a0I think Calgary, even if they lose one, I\u00a0think the Riders have a tougher schedule.”<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan hosts\u00a0the\u00a0Blue Bombers on Sunday at Mosaic Stadium\u00a0for the annual Labour Day Classic game. Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk, and Wes Cates\u00a0start\u00a0the pre-game show at 2 p.m. Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder have the game call at 5 p.m. Listen or watch our extensive coverage at the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network.<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saskatchewan Roughriders legend Darian Durant believes\u00a0after the Calgary Stampeders beat the Green and White for the second time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,57105,82],"class_list":["post-98226","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-saskatchewan-roughriderscalgary-stampedersvernon-adams-jrdarian-durantcfl-2025","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98226","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=98226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}