The fallout from the disappointing 2022 season for the Saskatchewan Roughriders began on Tuesday, as the team relieved offensive coordinator Jason Maas of his duties.
Run Game Coordinator and Offensive Line Coach Stephen Sorrells and Receivers Coach Travis Moore will not have their contracts renewed.
Before joining the Roughriders, Maas was the head coach with Edmonton for four seasons, he spent one season as the offensive coordinator in Ottawa in 2015, he was also the receivers coach in Toronto from 2012-14.
Head coach Craig Dickenson and General Manager Jeremy O’Day will be retained for the 2023 season. Both have contracts that run through the 2023 season.
Moore spent five seasons as the Riders receivers coach.
Sorrells also spent five seasons as a member of the Roughriders coaching staff.
Head coach Craig Dickenson, general manager Jeremy O’Day, and President & CEO, Craig Reynolds all spoke on Tuesday about the decisions made by the Roughriders for the 2023 season.
Riders head coach Craig Dickenson
Dickenson said the team felt confident about their chances after training camp but things didn’t turned out the way they had hoped, and the evaluation process has already begun.
“We’re going to learn, we’ve already done a pretty deep dive, Jeremy, (O’Day) myself and the staff, into the season, and we feel like they’ll be a lot of lessons learned from this year moving forward, and one of them, we need to do a better job on offence.”
He added the motivation behind of the offensive changes was productivity.
“He’s (Maas) a good football coach, an excellent man, a hard worker, but we feel like we got to get better, we’re judged on wins and losses and productivity, I felt like offensively we had to do something to try and flip the script and try and get better.”
While the offence did struggle throughout the season, Dickenson didn’t think about making any changes to the offensive coaching staff as he believes moves are more disruptive when they occur in the middle of the year.
The Riders head coach found out late Monday night that he and O’Day would be retained by the team, he’s happy that he will get another chance to lead the green and white once again after a disappointing 2022.
“I understand that you’re judged on wins and losses, and I can live with the decisions that is made on my future, they decided I was worth bringing back and I pleased by that, cause I feel like we got a lot of work still to do, and I’m excited and energized to be a part of that, and ready to get to work.”
One thing that the Great Falls, Montana native wants to see from his team next year is a commitment to the run.
“I think the more physical team wins and one of my philosophies as a coach is you want to impose your will and control the line of scrimmage, you got to have the guys to do that, but also philosophically you got to want to do it.”
As a team, the Roughriders offensively ranked 8th in offensive points scored, 8th in offensive touchdowns, last in net offence, last in first downs, last in 2nd down conversions, and last in sacks allowed.
While the offensive coaching staff will be different in 2023, Dickenson is hopeful the defensive staff, led by defensive coordinator, Jason Shivers, are back next season.
“I feel like they work well together, I feel like they are a good bunch that has a good feel for what I like to do philosophically as a head coach and I think they work well together.”
Riders GM Jeremy O’Day
The decision to retain Dickenson as head coach was made by O’Day. He said that he still believes in Dickenson as a head coach and that he deserved an opportunity to return to Saskatchewan based on his body of work before the 2022 season.
O’Day says that he takes responsibility for the outcome of the Roughriders season and noted it’s his job to assemble the best possible roster that the Roughriders can field on a weekly basis.
Injuries are apart of the game, but the Roughriders did have to encounter a pair of unique incidents this past season, beginning with the COVID outbreak just before the Touchdown Atlantic game in Nova Scotia against the Argonauts in July, along with the stomach flu that the Riders encountered the night before meeting the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, O’Day said it was difficult for the team to go through those situations.
“Felt like we still have enough time, we were still in control of our goal, but just never got it turned around.”
Dickenson will be given the freedom to choose the Roughriders next offensive coordinator said O’Day, adding that he will be involved in the process.
“He’ll (Dickenson) will have the final say, but I will be able to talk with him and go through with him the candidates and make sure that I’m involved with the decision, but ultimately he’ll get to decide the (offensive) coordinator is.”
The former centre for the Riders knows after the team allowed 77 sacks this past season, the offensive line is a position that the team needs to focus on.
“We need to be better.” O’Day added. “There has to be changes up front obviously because we weren’t successful enough at what we did and who we had.”
The Riders GM took his share of the blame getting the right pieces for the offensive line.
“We saw some regression and missed on a couple of players that we had hoped that would be better, that’s on me to have better players in those positions to be successful, there’s definitely some work that needs to be done.”
Quarterback is another key position that O’Day says that Riders will spend their evaluating this offseason. Cody Fajardo is set to become a free agent in February.
President & CEO Craig Reynolds
Roughriders President & CEO, Craig Reynolds says the evaluation process of the offseason began with meetings with O’Day before he reached the decision that the general manager deserved another opportunity to play a big part in assembling the Riders roster.
“At the end of the day, I just truly believe that he’s the best position to make the decisions, to make the corrections that are required, get us back on track, he’s a very good general manager, when you look at all the qualities that you look for in a general manager, Jeremy O’Day checks all of those boxes.”
Reynolds said that the operations cap that CFL teams have to abide by was not a factor in terms of not making changes to the Roughriders.
“Ultimately, we just got to make the right decisions for the franchise, and there are certain rules around the football ops. cap that would have to be considered, if you were going to make a change, but you can always make it work, but that’s the key, you can always make it work, but we felt that the best decision for the Saskatchewan Roughrider club was to retain Jeremy and Jeremy made the decision to keep Coach Dickenson.”
The Roughriders President & CEO said that he understood the fans frustration after the team finished 6-12 and missed the playoffs in a year where Saskatchewan is hosting the Grey Cup, but also pointed out that the emotion has to be removed when making a franchise altering decision that the Riders were facing.
“I think when we did that, some of the recent successes we had with the current regime with Jeremy and Craig, back to back West Finals, and a 4-1 start to the season, I think when you take the emotion out of it, we felt that the best decision was the decision that was made today.”
