Riders rookies are ready for one more rehearsal

Jordan Williams-Lambert is ready for the curtain to go up on what could be his last audition with the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

The CFL rookie is slated to play in the Roughriders’ final game of the 2018 pre-season Friday — they’re to face the Calgary Stampeders at Mosaic Stadium (7:30 p.m., CKRM) — and he goes into it knowing full well that it could decide his fate.

With CFL teams required to trim their rosters by Sunday at 8 a.m. Saskatchewan time, Williams-Lambert and other players — rookies and veterans alike — have to make their mark to stick with Saskatchewan.

“You have to look at it that way,” said Williams-Lambert, a receiver who has been trying to win a job with the Roughriders since attending an off-season workout in Akron, Ohio. “You take it day by day and (this game day) is the last day where we get to prove what we’ve got.

“You never know what can happen after that day, so you’ve got to see it as your last chance and fight for it.”

“This is the second audition,” added rookie defensive back Rudy Johnson. “From here, they’ll figure out what players would be best for the team and best for the scheme. Hopefully I’ll be a part of that team.”

Saskatchewan played its first pre-season game May 27, when it lost 35-12 to the host Edmonton Eskimos. The Roughriders didn’t dress a number of veteran players in that contest, content instead to let prospects show their wares.

The Roughriders have inserted a number of their vets into the lineup for Friday’s game, but many of the younger players will get playing time. They still have a chance of taking jobs that have belonged to veterans — or the vets could once and for all fend off challenges for their spots on the roster.

Head coach-GM Chris Jones said there are jobs available, but not as many as there were in 2016 (his first season with the club) or in ’17. With that in mind, Jones noted Thursday that he has seen some nerves from players with the second pre-season game on the horizon.

“They know that there’s a big percentage of guys who aren’t going to make our football team who are sitting in (the locker room),” Jones said. “But they’re ready to play, so they’ll go out there and play good football.”

The game against the Stampeders comes on the heels of an 18-day training camp in Saskatoon, where rookies and returnees tried to prove their worth to the Roughriders’ coaching staff.

Jones has said many times that he likes to see what players do when the lights come on, but he admitted that their performances during practices — and even off the field — play a role in the final decision.

“It’s a gauge of both (training camp and pre-season games),” he said. “You give them little tests and see who can go to breakfast at the right time and who’s going to do the right things over and over and over. But then that guy who does those things has to perform when you get to the game.”

Both Williams-Lambert and Johnson felt they progressed during camp. Neither had played under CFL rules before, so they had to adjust to those while also getting used to the Roughriders’ schemes.

Sometimes things went well and sometimes they didn’t.

“You can always look back and say you want to do things better, but I think I got better every day,” Williams-Lambert said. “I tried to work on different things like the waggle and the offence and doing things the right way.

“There are little details you can always get better at. The faster you get those things the better, because some people don’t get them until it’s too late.”

Both rookies said the Roughriders’ veterans were helpful (“They took us in as their little brothers and we definitely appreciate it,” Johnson said with a chuckle) but Williams-Lambert and Johnson are well aware that they control their own destiny.

That continues Friday against Calgary.

“There’s always pressure,” Johnson said. “It’s football — especially professional football — and you have to deal with that. In order to take that off your shoulders, you take it one play at a time and be in the moment.”

Some players could cement their positions on the roster with solid showings in Friday’s game, while others who were thought to be safe could earn themselves plane tickets home.

Jones has seen both things occur during his coaching career — and he expects the same thing to happen in the future, too.

“We’ve got people ranked A, B and C,” he said. “I have seen it where somebody plays so poorly that there’s no way you could justify it from last week’s performance and then double it up this week maybe with some more mistakes and they don’t make the football team. That’s just part of it.

“But then I’ve also seen guys ranked (lower and make it). Deon Lacey (a linebacker who played in Edmonton when Jones was the Eskimos’ head coach) was ranked in the middle of the pack and then all of a sudden after two pre-season games, it was like, ‘Man, this is one of the best special-teamers that we’ve seen.’

“I’ve seen both aspects of it.”