Mitchell Blair
Riderville.com
A CFL game is 60 minutes long. Last week, the Calgary Stampeders learned that lesson when they let a victory get away in Montreal and this week, the Saskatchewan Roughriders learned that lesson as they let a victory get away in Calgary.
Leading 35-17 with nine and a half minutes to play in regulation, it looked as if the Riders were going to be 4-0, but the Stampeders came back to tie the game and then win it in overtime as Kevin Glenn hit Nik Lewis for a 16 yard touchdown reception—his 3rd of the game giving Calgary a heartbreaking 41-38 victory.
Head Coach Corey Chamblin wasn’t going to debate the 4th quarter collapse and admitted that his team violated the cardinal rule that is you have to play all 60 minutes to be successful.
“No excuses,” a frustrated Chamblin told 620 CKRM’s Carm Carteri moments after the game. “Whether you are a young team or a veteran team, we have to learn how to play for 60 minutes no matter how much cushion we have. We just have to learn from our mistakes and I look forward to not seeing something like that happen again this year.”
It seemed as if the Riders may have been snakebitten at the end as Weston Dressler dropped what likely would have been a game-winning catch late in the 4th quarter after the Stampeders had tied the game while Chris Getzlaf could not hang on to a touchdown pass in the endzone in overtime. Chamblin says it’s certainly something that doesn’t happen every day, but it’s part of the game.
“The whole team dropped the ball if you look at it.” Chamblin said. “If I had to put my money on it, I wouldn’t expect 7 and 89 to do that, but that’s football and at the end of the day there are no excuses. We will be a better football team from this loss and go from there.”
The Rider defence had held the Stampeders in check for three and a half quarters. One player who did his best in controlling Kevin Glenn and the Calgary offence was defensive lineman Tearrius George. He is fully aware that the Riders snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on this night.
“I have no explanation for it,” George admitted. “It was our game, it was in the bag, but we didn’t finish it. We let them get some momentum and we let them get back into that game and eventually win it.”
George also denied any thought of the team being tired as they finished a stretch in which they played three games in 11 days.
“No excuses”. George said emphatically. “My legs were fine, the defence’s legs were fine. It was just a case of letting one get away and not getting the job done when we should have. I take my hats off to them for not giving up, but we know as a team that we needed to put together a 60 minute effort to win and we didn’t do that for some reason.”
Running back Neal Hughes was also at a loss for words at game’s end, but he says that’s the CFL.
“We didn’t play 60 minutes of football and you saw what happened.” Hughes said. “We have a 24 hour rule whether we win or lose and that’s right. We will watch film and see what we did right and see what we did wrong and correct those mistakes. We’re not happy over the way this one ended, but we will take it as a learning experience and move on. In this league, games go right down to the wire quite a lot and we learned a valuable lesson tonight.”
The Riders are now 3-1 on the season and will not play again until Saturday, July 28 when Andy Fantuz returns to Mosaic Stadium for the first time wearing another teams jersey as the Hamilton Tiger-Cats will be in town in a 4 o’clock start.
GAME NOTES
• Chris Getzlaf scored his 25th career TD in the contest. Of the 25 TD’s, 8 have come against the Stampeders
• The game was the first overtime contest of the 2012 season, but was the 7th game out of 14 this year decided by four points or less.
• Chris Milo’s 50 yard field goal in overtime was the longest field goal in the CFL this year
• The Stampeders have beaten Saskatchewan in their last six regular season meetings.
