Everything you wanted and more

I shook hands with Marc Mueller, offensive coordinator and when I first met him, he was the quarterback of the University of Regina Rams. He looked like he had been crying and I am not ashamed to admit I was crying too.

For the last three days I had broken bread and drank with fans of the Toronto Argonauts, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and Saskatchewan Roughriders. We talked about how we had gotten involved with following the CFL and the common denominator was through our family or specifically our parents.

Our parents, whether through taking us to games or allowing us to sit with the grown-ups in the living watching some snowy image on CBC, sparked in us a passion for this game that seems to have skipped a generation or two. It was an emotional time for Trevor Doroshenko who lost his father on this date 12 years ago and the morning of the game when he told us, we all hugged him because in sharing with other fans, we became part of a larger family.

Feeling as part of a larger family was part of the blueprint for a new team culture Cory Mace brought in when he was hired two years ago. Under previous Head Coach Craig Dickenson, the Riders had talent, but no character with the worst example being how the team performed in the first game after Rider legend George Reed passed away and came out totally flat against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

I will never forget the anger I felt coming from fans that day at the effort from the team and how people saw that as a disrespect for not just Reed, but for the people who looked up to him. If the Riders had not acted to reverse that perception the players and the team did not respect the symbolic importance of Reed, the stands would be empty.

Mace instilled a new culture stressing each player needed to rely on each other and together, they all represented the fans of a team for whom Grey Cup Championships are like comets crossing the horizon every uh, 23 years. They had fun, but they were determined, focused, and built a team with depth that would meet almost string of injuries.

I noticed the chance last year during a practice when Donna Hodel, who is another great Rider and CFL fan, asked if I thought the Riders would win the Cup that year. I thought it was possible, but probably asking for too much because Mace and his staff were on their first year and it would take a year to make their expectations clear to the players.

Then I told her they would win this year. There was a feeling I had from the first season ticket meeting with Mace who got fans much older than him ready to put on shoulder pads and run through walls for him, and this came from both male and female fans.

He got his players to believe, he got us to believe, and around 8:47 pm Sunday night in the home stadium of our biggest rival, he got everyone to believe by beating the team that tore out our hearts in 2009.

Trevor Harris entered a select fraternity of players who have quarterbacked a Rider championship team. After going from Toronto to Ottawa to Edmonton to Montreal and finally to Saskatchewan, Harris had the stats, but his two Grey Cup rings were from being a backup and not a starter.

I respected Harris as a passer who got the ball out quickly, but when we signed him, I wondered how long he would survive behind our offensive line, which was a work in progress. Getting a pass away quickly was probably one of two best ways to help defuse an explosive pass rush, but so was having a good running game so other teams could not just tee up their defensive line and go hunting.

The Riders that year did not have a great line, it was a bit better than when Cody Fajardo played here, and Harris was out with a broken kneecap. It was Dickenson’s last year and when Mace came in, he brought in Marc Mueller from Calgary as an offensive coordinator.

The next year Harris started off with a 3-0 record, went down with an injury, and when he came back helped the Riders finish second, beat BC in the semi-final and lost to Winnipeg. The Bombers enjoyed their last year of dominance in the west by losing again to Toronto in the Grey Cup.

The Bombers had completely bullied the Riders over the last five years and the Riders first had to believe and then actually beat the Bombers if they wanted to prove they were Grey Cup contenders. The Riders beefed up their quarterback room with Jake Maier and Tommy Stevens from Calgary.

Maier would have the experience not to be flustered unlike say, Jake Dolegala or Shea Peterson, in game situations, while Stevens was a Mack Truck on roller skates in short yardage situations. Harris got a running back in AJ Ouellette who would be a punishing runner, which is invaluable in November.

He also benefited from the astute drafting of the Rider football operations staff. Jeremy O’Day was the GM during the Dickenson years, the first two being great, the last two notable for the team not winning a game after Labor Day.

When Dickenson got the ax, it was easy to ask why not O’Day and the explanation was O’Day was stuck with Dickenson because the football administration cap was close to maxing out on the then current staff and O’Day deserved an opportunity to make his own hire, not have one forced on him.

He hit a home run with Mace who brought in perhaps the best group of assistant coaches seen around these parts in a while. Then the team drafted players who fit in and more importantly got experience when injuries knocked out various starters.

Last year were the growing pains for the Riders with a 9-8-1 record, finishing second. This year the team was focused on the end goal, preached consistency and looking after the details.

The Riders finished first and used their bye week before the Western Final to rest and get their injured players back. The Lions were on a roll with Most Outstanding Player and Canadian player Nathan Rourke on a six-game winning streak.

The Riders, who seemed to make it a practice of not blowing away their opponents, got past BC on a last-minute touchdown BC and Bomber fans claimed was not a catch. The Riders went into the Grey Cup against Davis Alexander who was undefeated in the 13 games he started for Montreal, although he had not played the Riders this year.

It would be fair to say almost everything broke the Riders way this year. Ouellette dropped 25 pounds and his old running mate from Toronto, Andrew Harris was now his coach. The loss of the extra weight gave Ouellette more mobility and perhaps made his hip, which was injured last year, better able to handle the stress of the job by not having so much weight.

Shedding the extra weight allowed Ouellette to run for over 1200 yards. The Riders were also blessed with the return of Jermarcus Hardrick at right tackle and Hardrick’s outgoing style helped form an inclusiveness on the team that I believe made them think if anything bad during the game, not to dwell in it because the players would handle it and overcome.

In terms of having everything break their way, while the Riders were facing a confident, cocky Alexander, they were also facing a quarterback who missed games during the season because of a hamstring injury and reinjured the hamstring towards the end of the Eastern Final.

Grey Cup week featured a lot of one upmanship as Montreal reported everything seemed to be okay with Alexander. However, on the first drive of the game for Montreal, second play, Alexander floated up an interception because even though he could play, he could not get enough on the ball to properly hit his receivers and the Riders picked him off three times.

The game was essentially won in the second quarter when the Riders scored to respond to a one yard run by former Rider back up quarterback and now Montreal third down specialist Shea Patterson. Stevens scored on a one yard run and Ouellette scored on a four-yard run to take the lead in the half.

The Riders won the coin toss and deferred to the second half, so they took the ball and marched down the field for another Stevens short yardage running TD. Toward the end of the third quarter, Montreal launched a drive, featuring the running of Stevie Scott who scored to make it 25-14.

Montreal also benefitted from some penalty calls from Head Referee Andre Proulx who was experiencing some problems with his microphone. Proulx could be heard in the press box singing along to O Canada to start the game and during the Montreal drive, Mace could be heard making the comment to Proulx about a roughing the passer penalty Mace thought was a light hit.

In 2009 the big play of the game was at the end of the game when Montreal missed a field goal but a too many men on the field penalty gave Montreal another shot and denied the Riders a Grey Cup.

Montreal was inside the Rider five-yard line when Patterson tried a quarterback sneak, then got one his teammates thrown into him by Rider cornerback Tevaughn Campbell. Patterson fumbled the ball on the goal line where it was recovered by Marcus Sayles.

Montreal had one last chance after Alexander reinjured his grade 3C injury to his hamstring after being chased out of bounds by Micah Johnson. Alexander was limping but he gutted it out, trying to hit a Hail Mary pass at the end of the game that was batted away by Sayles.

For those able to remember 2009 or 1976, the last three minutes were sheer torture wondering if a history of Rider defeats in the Grey Cup were about to repeat themselves. When the ball hit the ground, the players on and off the field began to embrace and celebrate.

Trevor Harris was named the Most Outstanding Player for setting a Grey Cup record for completion percentage at 85 per cent while receiver Samuel Emilus got the nod for Most Outstanding Canadian for catching all 10 passes thrown his way for over 100 yards.

For Bomber fans, the Rider win on their home turf was the ultimate indignity, like how Rider fans were feeling in 2022 when the Riders hosted, and Winnipeg played Toronto. The Bombers would never let the Rider fans forget if they had won the Cup on Rider turf, but they choked, and the Riders returned the favor and made sure they completed the game.

Their social media team was funny after the game noting that after the sun blows up, no one will ever remember what happened at their home stadium. The fear of Riders celebrating in the Bombers home dressing room was probably behind the CFL during Grey Cup week letting it slip that because the west was hosting so many consecutive Grey Cups, 2025 and 2027 would see the eastern teams being considered the home team and able to use the home stadium locker rooms, unless the home team qualified.

Otherwise, Winnipeg got blessed with incredible weather for mid-November, but the team fumbled the hospitality room tickets. Each team will book an area in the RBC Convention Center and normally, you could buy tickets for each night.

Winnipeg decided to sell all three nights as a package, so Bomber fans scooped up all the tickets to the hospitality rooms, leaving people from out of town looking for other places to drink and meet up once they arrived.

There was a free family friendly Fan Experience set up at the University of Manitoba where kids of all ages could try to see if passing, punting, or snapping the ball worked for them. They could hit heavy bags, try agility tests, and even pose with the Grey Cup.

The debacle of the hospitality tickets meant the Fan Fair was one of the best places to talk with over fans and most of them wanted to talk about rule changes like making the field 100 yards long instead of 110. One fan had a t-shirt printed with Rourke’s’ comments blasting the changes, another wore a cardboard sign saying no rule changes.

Johnson tried to manage his message during the Commissioner’s State of the CFL speech which was open to fans through a lottery. Instead of a microphone and allowing fans to come up, Johnson wandered from table to table, talking to fans and trying to sell them on his rule changes.

It’s highly doubtful it worked because the loudest boos at the game were not for PM Mark Carney who came out for the coin toss, but for Johnson at the end when he presented the Grey Cup.

Johnson tried to sell some sizzle by announcing the CFL would be releasing their schedule on December 9, a potential increase in the salary cap and promising to consult before altering the rules about the last three minutes of the game, which anyone in Saskatchewan could attest to after the last two games are among the most nerve racking in sports.

The CFL is apparently looking at moving their free agency window after the Super Bowl in February and before the start of the NFL year likely in April. Johnson also promised a revamp of the CFL website and all teams websites, and bringing in a season long fantasy football game like what the NFL is offering.

Fans were suspicious of the rule changes paving the way for US expansion, but Johnson tried to say while expansion is not on the table for now, if the CFL could not get into the Maritimes, a 10th team could be placed in Quebec City, home of the successful University of Laval.

After the game, none of that seemed to matter too much. The fifth Grey Cup title in the Rider history meant in the 112 years the Grey Cup has been fought for, the Riders have won once every 22.4 years.

The questions started even as we drove back to Regina. Harris is 39 years old and coming off some injury filled years. He is also a student of Tom Brady’s TB12 approach making stretching more important than lifting weights, especially for a quarterback.

I think Harris will be back, but after that, the Riders can expect to lose some receivers to free agency. There might be some others who might want to try to make some money elsewhere, but for Harris, I think it is the opportunity to do what no quarterback in Saskatchewan has ever done and that is win back-to-back Grey Cup titles.

The last team to win back-to-back titles were the Blue Bombers, who then went on to lose the next three Grey Cups. Their noses were out of joint from being upstaged in their city and stadium which may explain why or how the story of Mike O’Shea being interviewed by Toronto would take the top spot got out to the media during Grey Cup week.

O’Shea might have been seen as a natural to take on the job in Hamilton, and Hamilton apparently offered him anything to get him to accept, but O’Shea has been in Winnipeg for 12 years and he is comfortable there. Danny McManus turned down the opportunity to take over the General manager’s job in Hamilton to stay with Winnipeg although he does most of his work from his home in Florida and who would trade Florida in the winter for Calgary?

Toronto will be beating the bushes to find a new coach after Ryan Dinwiddie took over the coach and GM job in Ottawa. You do get names like Kent Austin who filled both rolls on Hamilton. Mike Clemons seems to be staying in the GMs chair, but the Argos are trying to rebuild after letting their entire defensive walk last season,

The football administration cap is still in place despite the players cap being raised and teams are still handcuffed if they sign a coach to a contract and let him go, but in the process of paying him off until he finds another job.

The Riders now move from being hunted to hunting. They will get some losses, but they should be able to get some wins

It’s a new challenge for this team and fan base. It just took Cory Mace 2 years to win a Grey Cup.

What can he do for an encore?