By Mitchell Blair
For Riderville.com
Much of the headlines surrounding the opening week 43-16 win by the Saskatchewan Roughriders over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats revolved around an offence that was clicking on all cylinders. That was fine with Riders defensive end Brent Hawkins, but he is hoping his unit can give a repeat performance of what they did in the season opener and get a win over the Edmonton Eskimos in the 2012 home opener.
“Minus that one long run they had, I think we were pretty good,” Hawkins said. “You take that away and they have under 10 points and run for under 100 yards so we were happy with what we did. That being said though, we don’t care about the glory or any of that crap, we just want to come out here and win ballgames and win the Grey Cup.”
While the Riders were on the top of their game on both sides of the ball last week, Hawkins is fully aware that what happened last week is history and that they can’t rest on their laurels going into the contest against the Eskimos.
“The first few weeks of the season are tough because as we have been told by the coaching staff, its tough to get tendencies on teams and know what they like to do in certain situations.” Hawkins said. “Right now, we are just going out there and playing to the best of our abilities taking a look at looks we haven’t seen and we just hope we can do against Edmonton what we did against Hamilton.”
That defence will have one different look to it on Sunday as newly-acquired Woodny Turenne and Terrell Maze will take over on the corners in place of Tristan Jackson who is nicked up and Nick Graham who struggled in Week 1. Teams don’t often make a lot of changes after winning a football game as solidly as they did, but Chamblin defended the move by saying if this gets them a win, so be it.
“We may have won the game, but at the same time there is always need for improvement,” Chamblin stated. “We have to make that improvement whether it’s a win or loss. Some teams make wholesale changes after a loss, we just make changes because we feel we need to be stronger is some areas going into this game.”
While the defence looks to keep up its impressive play, the same can be said for the offence. Receiver Chris Getzlaf says that considering the struggles of the offence last year, it was great to get off to such a good start and now the key is to build on that.
“It’s great to get that winning feeling again right off the start and get the guys motivated.” Getzlaf said. “When you have a performance like what we had, you know you have to stick to the process and that is what we are trying to do.”
Game time between the two 1-0 teams is 5 o’clock. TV coverage will be brought to you by TSN with Rod Black and Duane Forde on the call. Rider Radio 620 CKRM will have everything covered starting with “The Touchdown Club” at 2:30 followed by the play-by-play with Rod Pedersen and Carm Carteri at 5.
NOTES:
• Head coach Corey Chamblin will have family in the stands as his mother, sister, sister in law and nephew are flying in from the United States for the game.
• The Riders will look to end a drought against Western Division foes that have seen them not a win a game against a divisional opponent since beating Calgary in the 2010 Western Final.
• Darian Durant may have thrown for 390 yards in the season-opening win over Hamilton, but 235 of that 390 yards were yards gained after the catch
