While much of the attention on the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ win over the Montreal Alouettes on Saturday night went to the impressive game-winning drive in the final minutes, it all wouldn’t have happened if not for a series of plays moments earlier.
The Riders attempted to go for it on third and one at midfield with 2:57 remaining, but short-yardage machine Tommy Stevens got tripped up behind the line of scrimmage, giving the Alouettes a short field and a chance to pull away once and for all.
But Saskatchewan’s defence stood tall, only allowing the Als to get to the 35 before forcing a field goal. That went wide left, and return specialist Mathew Sexton ran it out of the end zone to prevent the rouge and set the offence up at their own 36 with 1:42 remaining.
Seven plays later, Trevor Harris found KeeSean Johnson in the end zone for the game-winning touchdown. Just like that, the Riders secured a 16-12 win, snapped their four-game losing streak, and qualified for the playoffs.
All because of something they’ve talked about for weeks on end — complementary football.
“That's kind of what I'm alluding to in terms of when we talked in the team meeting about we just need one play to complement another,” Harris said during the post-game media availability. “One group, and then another group complements that group, and we all believed in ourselves. Belief's a powerful thing, and I think that'll be good for us moving forward.”
The whole thing could have fallen apart in an instant when the turnover happened. Instead, the complete opposite took place, and it was something that coach Corey Mace was proud to see from his club.
“It was great because we've talked about that as a team the last couple weeks, just having each other's back, regardless of the situation,” he said. “Their defence made a heck of a play and all I heard was our defensive players and our defensive staff running the field getting ready to have the offence's back. It was awesome to see, there was no finger pointing. It was just, ‘Come on. Let's get this done.'”
Roughriders defensive back Tevaughn Campbell felt it was just a matter of the defence doing what they needed to do in a huge moment.
“We just stayed on business,” he said. “We had to get something shaking, and we knew at the end of the day it was going to fall on us to stop them, not let them get points. And we went out and did that.”
While the fact that everything turned out as well as it did was a massive positive, Mace would like to see far less heart-attack football in the future.
“I hate the fact that it had to come down to literally the end of the game, but in the same breath, I'm proud that we were able to stand up at the end in all three phases,” he said. “A lot of things were going and guys had to make plays and these guys did that. That last piece of that game was just like, ah, this is familiar. We love that. Let's do that more.”
The Riders will have a chance to do just that in their final game of the regular season against the Edmonton Elks. Saskatchewan linebacker Aubrey Miller Jr. — who had nine tackles and a sack on Saturday — would like to see his team finish as strong as possible heading into the playoffs.
“We showed what we can do and complacency is not an option,” he said. “We're going to come back and we're going to make sure we do it next week. We're just checking back in, we're getting our groove back.”
Game time is 2 p.m. from Mosaic Stadium, and you can catch all the action on the Rider Broadcast Network.
