The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ 2017 campaign ended with a loss Sunday, but Willie Jefferson has a different view of the season as a whole.
“I take this season as a win,” the Roughriders’ defensive end said following Sunday’s 25-21 loss to the host Toronto Argonauts in the CFL’s East Division final. “We did what nobody expected us to do.
“We were a bunch of misfits on one team, but we came together and became a team. We became the Saskatchewan Roughriders and did what we had to do for the organization and what we had to do for the city. We just came up short by four points.”
There was a multitude of changes to the team’s roster during the second year of Chris Jones’ tenure as the Roughriders’ vice-president of football operations, general manager and head coach — but there had been a lot of roster turnover in 2016, too.
That team went 5-13-0 in the regular season and missed the playoffs. The 2017 edition developed better chemistry than its predecessor and posted a 10-8-0 regular-season record to qualify for the post-season.
The Roughriders crossed over into the East Division playoffs and knocked off the hometown Ottawa Redblacks in the division semifinal on Nov. 12. But with a berth in Sunday’s Grey Cup game in Ottawa on the line, Saskatchewan stumbled in Toronto.
Cody Fajardo’s one-yard touchdown run with 23 seconds left gave the Argos a come-from-behind victory and made the Roughriders the 10th crossover team to fall short of reaching the CFL final in as many tries.
But that outcome didn’t minimize the progress the Roughriders made from one season to the next.
“It was the belief in the man next to you,” Jefferson said when asked why his team took a step forward. “It was about being accountable, believing in the coaches, believing in the offence, believing in the defence and just working as hard as we can.”
Mind you, Saskatchewan had to progress as the season wore on.
Four losses in the first six regular-season games had many wondering if Jones’ rebuilding blueprint was going to take effect in Year 2 of his time at the helm. An 8-4-0 finish to the regular season and a spot in the playoffs answered those questions.
“Nobody gave us a chance,” Jones said. “They were ready to run our coaching staff out of town. But we’ve got a great group of guys in the locker room and we’ve got a great coaching staff, a bunch of really good people. They enjoy being around one another.
“Neither group minds working. They work their butt off and I couldn’t be more proud. Unfortunately, we fell just a bit short.”
And that didn’t sit well with slotback Bakari Grant, who wasn’t taking any consolation from the Roughriders’ five-win improvement over the previous season.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “(Teams are measured on) a year-by-year basis. If you don’t win a championship, that’s what you play for. That’s where we’re at.”
Quarterback Kevin Glenn was more impressed with the turnaround from 2016 to ’17. Like Grant, Glenn wasn’t with the Roughriders in 2016, but the 17-year CFL veteran believes 2017 was a turning point for the team.
“That’s what you can build off of,” said Glenn, who threw 25 touchdown passes in the regular season — his highest single-season total since he threw 25 for the Calgary Stampeders in 2012.
“You don’t want to take this game and say, ‘Oh, we lost but we played well.’ We were trying to get to the Grey Cup and that was the be-all and end-all. But when you look back on it, taking it from what happened last year to this year, it’s a huge jump, a big-time jump.
“I think that more so sits with the fans, the opening of the new stadium and all that kind of stuff. It’ll still be a season that we can remember.”
The 2017 campaign was the Roughriders’ first in Mosaic Stadium, a $278-million edifice that replaced a stadium in which the team had been housed for 90 years.
The new facility and the team’s improved play helped Saskatchewan post a league-high average attendance of 32,762 fans per game. The Roughriders went 5-4-0 at home during the regular season, with three of those losses coming by a combined 10 points (one, three and six points).
Now comes the task of continuing the momentum.
The Roughriders have a number of key components signed through 2018, including Glenn, running backs Marcus Thigpen and Trent Richardson, offensive linemen Derek Dennis and Brendon LaBatte, receivers Rob Bagg and Chad Owens, linebackers Sam Eguavoen and Henoc Muamba and defensive back Ed Gainey.
But there are reportedly more than 20 players who are eligible to become free agents in February, so Jones and his cohorts will have to figure out how they want to attack the roster to keep things moving forward.
The head man likes how things are shaping up.
“The makeup of our locker room is extremely good,” Jones said. “We’ve got people who care about one another — genuinely care, not just say it.
“I know that they don’t mind the work because we put the work in. Now it’s just a matter of (taking care of) those small little minute details and understanding the importance and magnitude of everything that you do on the field can directly affect a game.”
The memory of Sunday’s loss in Toronto could be a motivating factor for the Roughriders who return in 2018. For Owens, the key to improving on 2017 is simple.
“Just keep working,” he said. “Work to be a little bit more disciplined at times and be more consistent across the board. Regardless of your success, there’s always room for improvement.
“We had a great year. A lot of people wrote us off and didn’t think we had what it took. But in this locker room, we believed and we were one play away from moving on and proving everybody wrong — or rather proving us right.”
