By Mitchell Blair
For Riderville.com
The Saskatchewan Roughriders have served notice to the rest of the CFL that they are back and that their play in the first half of the 2011 season was an aberration.
The football team has their feet underneath them again upon the return of Ken Miller to the bench as they walked into Winnipeg and beat the Blue Bombers 45-23 to complete a sweep of the annual back to back series between the two clubs.
In a game dubbed “The Banjo Bowl”, Winnipeg quarterback Buck Pierce did his best to provide the picks as the Saskatchewan defence forced 5 interceptions—two of them by rookie Craig Butler who also had a hellacious hit on Pierce in the first half that may have changed the game around.
“I was ready to try and beat the running back, but they switched sides and I came clean and got a good shot on him,” said the product of Western Ontario. “His helmet came off and I thought it was the ball at first, but it was good.”
Butler says the last couple of weeks have provided a different atmosphere in the dressing room and its showing.
“The locker-room atmosphere is different, the way we practice is different,” Butler concluded. “We are a very positive bunch right now.”
While Butler and mates were doing things on defence, Darian Durant continued on his renaissance since Miller came back to coach the team as he threw four touchdown passes on the afternoon—two of them to Chris Getzlaf. He says it was a situation on this day where they needed some time to re-familiarize his favourite weapon with what was going on.
“With Andy (Fantuz) coming back, I tried to force some things to him to get involved early instead of doing my progressions and making my reads and throws accordingly,” Durant admitted to 620 CKRM’s Carm Carteri after the game. “After all that died down, I started focusing on my progressions and my reads and the guys started making plays. The Bomber D was doubling Andy all day and that opened things up for Dress (Weston Dressler) and Getz (Chris Getzlaf). That’s the impact he has.”
As expected, Miller was smiling from ear-to-ear upon game’s end saying the same thing that he has said since he assumed the head coaching role in 2008. That being he was proud of “the men”.
“They played so hard today and we overcame adversity at the start and got a big win in a hostile place. It’s a big character win by our team.” Miller said. “The hit by Butler really set the tone for the defence and it changed the game around. When you take away the ball that many times, that’s awesome.”
The win is Saskatchewan’s second straight and moves them to a mark of 3-7 which is still the worst record in the West as they remain a game back of 3rd place B-C. They return to Mosaic Stadium on Saturday afternoon to take on the league-worst Toronto Argonauts in a 2 o’clock start.
