The list of issues the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ special teams had in their most recent CFL game is a long one.
During a 48-28 loss in Winnipeg on Saturday, the Roughriders (a) were faked out by the Blue Bombers on a 97-yard punt return for a touchdown, (b) failed to recover an onside kickoff, (c) failed to retrieve an onside punt, and (d) managed just three yards on three punt returns.
But for Saskatchewan special-teams co-ordinator Craig Dickenson, there was a more egregious error committed by his charges.
“I felt like we didn’t fight for every blade of grass out there — and that’s something we pride ourselves on,” Dickenson said Tuesday at Mosaic Stadium. “You may beat us, but you’re not going to outwork us. I felt like Winnipeg outworked us in that game.
“We’ve taken the message and Coach (Mike) Scheper and I have expressed the message to the guys. We’ve got to be better, we’ve got to fight harder and we’ve got to fight for every blade of grass. Win, lose or draw, that’s our standard and we’ve got to hold our guys to it.”
Consider the message received.
“Overall, our special teams weren’t what we needed to be,” fullback Spencer Moore said. “We’ve been playing so well all year. We’ve sort of been the steady beacon for the team. When something’s going bad on offence or on defence, special teams is pretty steady and consistent. We weren’t that on Saturday.”
“We had a few plays that we should have made to at least gain momentum or get the ball back to put our offence in a good position to score,” added Denzel Radford, who leads the Roughriders this season with 12 special-teams tackles. “From that perspective, we let the team down a little bit.
“But we’ve got to bounce back. We can’t dwell on what’s in the past and we’ve got to start focusing on Hamilton.”
Saskatchewan returns to action Friday against the host Tiger-Cats.
The Roughriders went into Winnipeg ranked third in the league in opponent’s punt-return average, at 10.0 yards per attempt.
Saskatchewan gave up six returns for 137 yards, including Maurice Leggett’s TD on a trick play (more on that later). As a result, the Roughriders now rank seventh in the CFL at 11.3 yards per opponent’s return.
Saskatchewan also went into Investors Group Field with the league’s fourth-best net punting average at 35.2 yards. After posting a net average of just 21 yards in Winnipeg, the Roughriders now sit ninth in the CFL at 33.6 net yards.
“We expect more from ourselves,” Moore said. “We prepare in a way that allows us to be successful on game day. We have the right schemes and the right guys. For us to come out and have a bit of a drop-off is obviously not what we want.
“But we’ve been saying all week not to let the Bombers beat us twice and affect us this week. We’ve just got to flush it, move on and get ready to dominate Hamilton.”
One of the keys will be to avoid another trick play like the one the Bombers ran early in Saturday’s second quarter.
As planned, Saskatchewan’s Josh Bartel punted the ball to the left side of the field, but Winnipeg returner Kevin Fogg raced to the defence’s right as if he was fielding the ball.
Most of the Roughriders’ coverage team veered toward Fogg, which allowed Leggett to retrieve the ball, beat one would-be tackler and go the distance.
“It was a well-run play,” Dickenson said. “As soon as I saw the ball (going) left and all of our guys going right, I had flashbacks because I actually saw the return when the (NFL’s St. Louis) Rams ran it against Seattle three years ago.
“You’ve got to tip the hat to (the Bombers), they made a nice call. There’s a lot of things that have got to go right for that to work and they did. The ball stayed inbounds — we were hoping it’d go out of bounds — but they did a great job of selling the kick the opposite way and our guys took the cheese.”
Asked Tuesday what teaching points came out of the play, Dickenson said: “Trust your people.” The special-teamers knew the ball was supposed to go to the left and yet they allowed the Bombers to convince them otherwise.
“I told them in the meeting, ‘How many times has our punter shanked a ball completely opposite of where we’re trying to go?’ ” Dickenson said. “They all agreed, ‘None. Zero. Ever.’
“But it’s easy with a clicker to sit back and say what should have happened. You have to put yourself in their shoes a little bit and realize they’re playing against guys who are trying to hit them and trying to disrupt them during a game, so they have to trust their eyes — and their eyes told them it was going right in spite of everything that they heard in the huddle.”
The Roughriders responded to the Leggett touchdown with a 75-yard Naaman Roosevelt TD that cut the Bombers’ lead to 15-13. Saskatchewan then attempted an onside kick, but Winnipeg recovered at the Roughriders’ 47-yard line.
Three plays later, the Bombers scored a touchdown that, when converted, made the score 22-13.
An attempted onside punt by the Roughriders in the fourth quarter also failed and led to a Winnipeg field goal that completed the scoring.
“It was that type of game,” Moore said. “We reached into our bag of tricks and it didn’t matter what we were doing, they had an answer for us.
“We can’t dwell on it too much. We just have to prepare the same way we have been all year because we have been so good, go out this week and get back to what we’ve been doing.”
