By Mitchell Blair
For Riderville.com
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are almost out of strikes as they get ready for a Thanksgiving Day game in Edmonton, but the team is not giving up according to GM Brendan Taman.
“There’s still a pretty strong group of character guys in that room,” Taman said during a recent interview. “I really believe that as the season goes forward that our character will come through and that we will play good football. “
That statement is a bold one considering the team has played its worst football of the year losing back to back games by 37 points to Western Division foes. Despite the poor performances against the Lions and Stampeders, Taman believes his team can re-group and get everything together to produce a positive result and keep playoff chances alive in Edmonton on Monday.
“My mindset is still to play out the 2011 season,” Taman said. “I know the picture is bleak, but the focus right now is Monday’s game against Edmonton. If we lose, there is still an integrity factor there, so we will go out and play our game—we won’t make wholesale changes and drop first stringers for second stringers. We might make a change or two as the weeks go on, but you do that every week in an attempt to get better. I’m just hoping we can get a win in Edmonton to keep our playoff chances alive. The easiest thing to do would be to throw in the towel, but we have too much pride for that to happen and it won’t happen.”
Many are trying to figure out how a team that has appeared in three of the last four Grey Cup championships have managed to go south in such a rapid way this year. Like many others, Taman is trying to figure it out.
“It’s been a very challenging year. We got off to such a bad start for whatever reason. We lost that first game to Edmonton and it seemed to spiral downwards from there. We lost games to Western teams at home and we tried digging out of it. We felt we were doing that, but the last two weeks have been disastrous. When you lose as bad as we have, you have to take a serious look at what is going on. We’ve given up a lot of big plays over the last two weeks and those big plays have meant a big hit to our confidence. I think we still have the right mix in that room even though some think we don’t, but even though we have made changes, we still have character and we still have people in that room that are leaders. We just have to start believing in ourselves again. If we can do that, we will play much better football.”
Monday’s game will start at 2 PM. It will be on TSN while radio coverage will begin at 1 PM on Rider Radio—620 CKRM with the pre-game show followed by the play-by-play with Rod Pedersen and Carm Carteri.
