The Roughriders want to reverse a bye-week trend

The Saskatchewan Roughriders have been here before.

Earlier this CFL season, the Roughriders went into a bye week riding a wave of positive vibes after thrashing the visiting Hamilton Tiger-Cats 37-20 on July 8.

The Roughriders enjoyed their time off, with some returning to their homes across the continent and others remaining in Regina to get acclimated to their new surroundings.

After reconvening for a week of practice, the Roughriders headed to Calgary brimming with confidence … and were humbled 27-10 by the Stampeders on July 22.

Since the Ottawa Redblacks entered the league in 2014 — giving each team two byes during the regular season — Saskatchewan is 3-4-0 in its first game back after a bye (including the loss in Calgary). However, the Roughriders have won just one of their past five games following a week off.

Saskatchewan currently is on its second bye week of the 2017 regular season. It went into the break on a high after a dominant 41-8 victory over the B.C. Lions at Mosaic Stadium on Sunday — a win the Roughriders hope will carry over into their visit to the Edmonton Eskimos on Aug. 25.

Only time will tell.

“We’ll see after the bye week how we come back,” quarterback Kevin Glenn said after the victory over the Lions. “That’s a question that we’ll have to answer after we get back from the bye week.

“We saw what happened the last time we had a win here and had a bye week and then had to go on the road. We want to make sure that we don’t do that, so I think everybody — players, coaches, everybody — is on the same page when we discuss this.”

Cornerback Kacy Rodgers II hopes they are.

“It kind of sucks that we have a bye week as soon as we have a great game,” he said. “It happened to us with Hamilton a few weeks ago, but really, we should have learned from that first bye week and how we come back.

“It doesn’t matter that we have a bye week now. No one cares. There are no excuses. When we come back, we have Edmonton — they’re the No. 1 team in the league (with a 7-1 record) — so I’m pretty sure that’s all we’re going to be thinking about even though we have a few days off.

“This performance (against B.C.) hopefully will give us enough energy and enough swagger that we can carry that to the next game.”

Saskatchewan was 0-2 when the Tiger-Cats came to town, having lost its first two games by a total of four points.

The Roughriders broke through in a big way against Hamilton, putting up season highs in time of possession (36 minutes 21 seconds), first downs (31), passing yards (380) and net offence (464) and season lows in opponents’ passing yards (189) and net offence (195).

Two weeks later, Saskatchewan was on the receiving end of a one-sided performance.

The Stampeders sacked Glenn five times in the first half, Jerome Messam rushed for 135 yards, and busts in the Saskatchewan secondary left Calgary receivers running open.

Since that loss, the Roughriders have won a game at home (38-27 over the Toronto Argonauts on July 29), lost a contest on the road (30-15 to B.C. on Aug. 5) and won another game at Mosaic Stadium (Sunday’s rout of the Lions).

Going into their first bye week of the season, several Roughriders players said they weren’t worried that the time off was going to blunt their momentum. Judging by the result in Calgary, that’s precisely what happened.

Now the Roughriders face exactly the same scenario with their second bye.

“You can’t do anything about the schedule, so I don’t think I’d call it a bad time for a bye,” noted centre Brendon LaBatte, whose team on Sunday snapped a seven-game losing streak to the Lions. “We’ve just got to come back with the same mindset that we had (going into Sunday’s game).

“There were a lot of guys who felt really terrible about how things went down in B.C., and that was almost a bit of a motivator. Ultimately, it comes down to how long you’re going to let a team run you over until you put your foot in the ground, take a stand and start fighting back. That was the mindset all week.”

The Eskimos haven’t had as much success against the Roughriders of late as the Lions had had; Edmonton has won seven of the teams’ 12 regular-season meetings since 2013.

But Edmonton has beaten the Roughriders four straight times at Commonwealth Stadium in the regular season, including twice in 2016.

Linebacker Sam Eguavoen is hopeful that things will be different this time.

“I feel like we just took a really big step as a defence,” he said in reference to the Roughriders’ play Sunday against the Lions. “The offence has been great, but the defence was kind of the Achilles heel of the team even though the offence didn’t score (until late in the game in Vancouver).

“I highly doubt that the same thing will happen when we go into Edmonton that we did when we went into Calgary. That’s just not going to happen.”