Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Trevor Harris is known for keeping a relatively stoic presence on the field and the sidelines no matter how things are going, but even he has his limits.
After an interception by Stantley Thomas-Oliver in front of Riders receiver Dylan Djete late in the fourth quarter all but snuffed Saskatchewan’s opportunity for a comeback, TSN cameras caught the 14-year veteran yelling into his helmet as he left the field.
And who could blame him — the 30-16 loss was one of the ugliest the Green and White had gone through in quite some time, with bad penalties and miscues on all sides of the ball repeatedly costing the team.
For a crew that had vowed a better showing compared to the previous disappointing outing in Hamilton, it was an especially rough performance.
“Shoot, I was as disappointed as anybody could be out there,” Harris said after practice on Wednesday. “I promise you, the guys in the locker room are holding ourselves to a higher standard than what anybody knows. We want expectations to be high … You want people to be like, ‘What's going on here,’ which is kind of what we're doing.”
Djete had no issue with Harris showing his frustration, admitting that he was in much the same frame of mind.
“We were just working so hard. We know we had some frustration because some things (didn’t work),” Djete said. “We were just killing ourselves, including me. So we know what to do, we just need to execute and that's what we're going to do.”
Still, even with things going as awry as they did, the Riders maintained their presence as a cohesive unit, and that included when Djete had his route-running miscue that led to the pick.
“I know I got a good leader,” he said. “Even though I could have a bad play, he's still gonna look me in my eyes and tell me, ‘I got you.’ It just made me feel like I got somebody to lean on and, just to see all my teammates, every time there's a bad play, they always keep their head up.”
Harris said that one of the biggest takeaways from the loss should be learning from the adversity, especially given that Saskatchewan has now lost back-to-back games and are in danger of falling in the standings if things continue.
“I go through my entire CFL career and I don't know that there's teams that have won a championship that haven't, at some point in the season, gone through a point where it's time to bite down,” Harris said.
“If you don't have high expectations, and you don't have adversity, it's hard to grow as a team and find out who you are through those adverse times,” Harris said. “Like I told the team after the game, it's a matter of time before we turn the corner. Just make sure that we're leaning into this adversity together, so that we can round and turn this corner quicker.”
One thing the Riders made sure to point out is they aren’t close to pushing any kind of a panic button just yet. The pieces of the puzzle are still there, says offensive coordinator Marc Mueller, and a bounce-back this week against the Toronto Argonauts wouldn’t come as a surprise in the least.
Saskatchewan hasn’t lost three games in a row since 2024, and Mueller pointed to the team’s leaders as a major reason for that.
“We've got good leadership from the top that everyone believes in and believes in each other,” Mueller said. “We've had an urgency to get better, and that starts with your best players doing that at practice.”
The Riders are back in action on Saturday when they host the Argos at Mosaic Stadium. Kickoff is at 5 p.m.
