April 10, 2016

Day One Minicamp Recap

The first day of Riders Minicamp 2016 is a small window of what players and fans can expect from the Chris Jones era. Many things were evident right away; pace, intensity, communication and letting athletes be athletes.

The day began with basic testing of the players 40-time, standing broad and long jump, shuttle run and 3-cone drill.

Both teams broke into their individual groups to work on many of the basics of both sides of the football then into their offensive and defensive groups. Offensively it was all about implementing the basics of the offence with the first skeleton drill seeing the quarterbacks holding on and not throwing as the receivers and running backs went through their routes. Then they went to a full skeleton offence.

Defensively, it was all about pace and communications. Chris Jones went through each group quickly making sure they were doing the basics efficiently. The defensive line is a large group, they paired up with the offensive line group, which was made up of just six players. The lone Canadian offensive lineman here at camp, Aaron Picton played very well at all positions against some great athletes.

There was a small break before the team went through the same process again for another hour. Lots of pace and the players quickly figured out the roots of the CFL game and the style of offence and defence the Riders want to play this season. The most noticeable was on offence with the coaches calling out the play clock to get off and execute the plays in time.

One last thing that stuck out is the arm strength of all the quarterbacks in camp. There are not too many throws that this group of ten cannot make.

Even Head Coach, Chris Jones was impressed, “The offence was very sharp. We didn’t have any time counts, we got off all of the plays in and we gave them 20 seconds. We were going double barrel back and forth. I thought the quarterbacks threw the ball pretty well. The receivers got open. It was the first day for the DB’s to be covering the waggle but after a couple of days I think they will settle in and be better in coverage. I like the big guys down there; I think four or five guys stood out. They were long and athletic.”

Day two of Minicamp 2016 will go again tomorrow morning with riderville.com and all of the Saskatchewan Roughrider social feeds giving you exclusive, inside coverage capping with a LiveStream show at approximately 10:30am Saskatchewan time.

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