Riderville.com Staff

When the Roughriders entered the 2011 season, they were viewed as the team to beat in the West after capturing back to back division titles and appearing in the Grey Cup championship in consecutive seasons.

When the season ended in early November, Saskatchewan’s team was out of the playoff race, finishing the year with a disappointing 5-13 record.

What factors contributed to the dramatic fall-off in production?  How easily can they be fixed? How will the re-vamped front office and coaching staff, which is now completely finalized, put all the pieces together and push this team back into the playoff picture and Grey Cup race?

General Manager Brendan Taman is now completely in charge of Football Operations and has a strong supporting team behind him in Jeremy O’Day (Assistant GM) and Craig Smith (Director of Player Personnel).

“We really wanted to improve our depth ,” stated Taman. “The ability to work through injuries when players go down, or get nicked, is huge for us. Last season we weren’t as strong depth wise as we needed to be.”

As the evaluations of players continue, the second year General Manager says the Front Office will also continue to “Self Scout” more so than in year’s past, a term that has been heard frequently within the confines of Mosaic Stadium.

“We wanted our main focus as a Front Office to be on bringing in talent, and the coaches’ main focus to remain on preparing for game-day,” noted Taman. “We always want to win the offseason, and that means being better prepared both on and off the field, the recent hiring of Dan Farthing is a prime example of that.”

While the coaching staff is complete, Taman is quick to point out that the 2012 version of the Saskatchewan Roughriders is far from complete, and more changes are on the horizon.

“Everybody expected change following a 5-13 season,” said Taman. “We’ve already made moves with about 15 guys (signings ,re-signings, releases etc..) and we fully expect that number to grow.”

With the amount of roster movement expected, fans may have to keep a 2012 Rider roster handy to become familiar with the names of many members of this year’s club.

“There’s definitely going to be some people wondering Who’s that guy? or Where did he come from?” stated Taman. “We’re definitely expecting to have more first year players on the roster this season, we want to have players being pushed at every position and earn their roster spot.”

“Heading into training camp this year, there aren’t many guys who can say their roster spot is safe. Position battles are going to be much more open than in year’s past, and a lot of that relates to trying to improve our depth as a football team.”

We are currently four short months away from rookies reporting to Mosaic Stadium for training camp, a camp that is sure to feature some great position battles and some fantastic young talent.

For Rider fans anxious to see what direction the team is headed, these are exciting times, and June can’t come soon enough.