REGINA – When it comes to pregame preparation and planning for an opponent’s main strength, it would be difficult to have a situation more obvious that what the Saskatchewan Roughriders faced when they took on the Edmonton Elks in their CFL matchup a week ago.
Stop running back Justin Rankin and you greatly increase your odds of stopping the Elks in general.
And for the most part, the plan was successful. Rankin was held to a total of 66 yards offence on the ground and through the air, and that helped give the Riders every chance they needed to win the game.
Elks quarterback Cody Fajardo and his corps of receivers had a far, far different idea how things would work, though. Fajardo threw for 510 passing yards, and his team came away with the narrow 36-34 win.
Now, the teams get to do it all again on Saturday night at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton. Saskatchewan has spent the first few days of practice this week going over what happened in last week’s meeting and putting in what will ideally be fixes for the issues that led to the tough loss.
“Every week there's tweaks and changes we want to make from the week before when we're playing the same opponent, but for the most part it's a lot of technique stuff,” said Riders defensive lineman Caleb Sanders. “A lot of just getting out on the field and just being able to fill the plays that we're gonna see.”
Knowing what Rankin is capable of led to Saskatchewan admittedly putting extreme focus on the run at times, which led to a few extra options that Fajardo and crew were more than happy to take advantage of.
“When you have an elite back like that, even if he's not making plays the entire game, he can pop one loose at any given moment,” Sanders said. “I feel like for sure we overplayed the run, which led to them just being on the pass for a lot. That's what we were expecting, so, as long as we fix it this week, that's all that matters.”
The Riders defensive secondary most definitely isn’t taking what happened lying down, especially with the handful of big plays that led to Edmonton finding a way to respond to anything Saskatchewan’s offence put on the board.
“I feel like most of the things we beat ourselves on, it’s really us versus us and if we clean up the mistakes we’ll be fine,” said defensive back DaMarcus Fields, who led the team with seven tackles in the previous meeting. “It’s just communication in the backend and playing as a whole and together. We didn’t play well together and I feel like that’s what we need to do this week.”
Fellow DB Marcus Sayles was of much the same opinion, and even came with a challenge.
“If you threw 500 yards on us one game, let's see if you can do it again,” he said, adding that repeating such a performance isn’t going to be an easy task against the Riders veteran defensive back corps.
“[Fajardo] is a great quarterback with great receivers and great weapons that helped get those 500 yards, but at the same time we know we have a great defence and veteran leaders on our team and we never want to give up that many yards to anybody. Our approach is always going to be the same, we have to lock down the little things we messed up last time.”
The Rider Broadcast Network will have the pre-game show with Teagan Witko and Wes Cates beginning at 2 p.m. on Saturday, with Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder bringing you the game call at 5 p.m.
