Mike Edem isn’t interested in a participation ribbon.
The 29-year-old defensive back is in his sixth CFL season — and his teams have qualified for the playoffs in each of those seasons. That list of clubs includes the 2018 Saskatchewan Roughriders, whose participation in the post-season was officially confirmed by the CFL on Tuesday.
Edem began his CFL career in 2013 with the Montreal Alouettes, who lost in the Eastern Semi-Final that season. He and the 2014 Als fell in the Eastern Final, as did his Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2015.
Edem and the B.C. Lions were beaten in the Western Final in 2016 and, in 2017, he and the Roughriders lost in the Eastern Final as the crossover team.
In other words, he has yet to reach the Grey Cup game. When it was pointed out Wednesday that at least he has made the playoffs in every season, Edem wasn’t impressed.
“I don’t hang my hat on that at all,” he said after the Roughriders practised at Mosaic Stadium. “It actually makes me mad because it’s like a gift and a curse, making the playoffs but never making it to the big game.”
Having officially qualified for the post-season, the 2018 Roughriders have a chance to get to the Grey Cup game.
Saskatchewan (10-5-0) is solidly in second place in the West Division, four points back of the first-place Calgary Stampeders (12-2-0) and four points up on the third-place Winnipeg Blue Bombers (8-7-0). The Lions (7-7-0) and Edmonton Eskimos (7-8-0) are still in the mix as well.
The Roughriders are to visit Winnipeg on Saturday before completing their regular-season schedule with games in Calgary on Oct. 20 and against the visiting Lions on Oct. 27. Saskatchewan has a bye in the final week of the regular season.
After looking at all of the various possibilities for the final four weeks of the regular season, the CFL determined Tuesday that Saskatchewan can’t finish any lower than fourth in the West Division. That would mean crossing over into the East Division for the playoffs, but at least it’s a spot.
“(Making the playoffs) is our expectation,” Edem said. “We didn’t start the season hoping to see where we’d end up. We started our season with goals and expectations of where we wanted to be when a certain time comes — and when it got cold outside, we wanted to be making a push for the playoffs.
“It’s just a stepping stone to our ultimate goal.”
“We’ve got bigger goals than (making) the playoffs,” added Roughriders head coach-GM Chris Jones. “We’ve won enough football games to at least be in the dance and so now we want to take the next step, do our best to try to secure a home field of some sort and keep chasing Calgary.”
Defensive end Charleston Hughes spent the first 10 seasons of his CFL career with the Stampeders — and they made the playoffs in each of those 10 seasons.
Now that the Roughriders have qualified in Hughes’ first season in green and white, he’s 11-for-11 as a playoff participant.
“It’s a privilege and an honour to say something like that, to say that you’ve never missed the playoffs,” he said. “But really, you have to take it with a grain of salt and continue to play and do what you’ve got to do.
“I’ve got a lot of playoff experience, so I know what it takes to win. Really, it’s just about having a winning mentality. Once you have that, you can build and establish some kind of precedent throughout the league. That’s what’s most important.”
Offensive lineman Brendon LaBatte is to make the seventh post-season appearance of his 11-year CFL career. He made the playoffs twice with Winnipeg (2008, ’11) and missed twice (2009-10) and has qualified five times with Saskatchewan (2012-14, 2017-18) and missed twice (2015-16).
That gives LaBatte a perspective that some of his more fortunate teammates may lack: A spot in the playoffs shouldn’t be taken for granted.
“Every group has got some old guys in there, so you get a feel that these opportunities don’t come around very often,” he said. “When I speak for myself, it has been 11 years and I’ve appeared in two Grey Cups (2011 and 2013). Common odds would get you more than that.
“It’s not a luck thing; you’ve got to take advantage of every day that you’ve got and if you’ve got an opportunity to play in the post-season, you’ve got to seize it.”
Edem certainly knows that. Getting tripped up one step short of the league final five times in his career has given him a healthy respect for the playoff process.
“You don’t take it for granted,” he said. “If anything, it pisses you off more that you haven’t won a Grey Cup.
“Every year that you’re in (the post-season), you try to find something you did the previous year that could change (the outcome) and you try to get better at that. Then you add that and you try to keep improving to make sure that, at the end of the day, you’re in the final dance.”
Hughes has been in the Grey Cup game five times in his career, winning in 2008 and 2014 and losing in 2012, 2016 and 2017. He and the Stampeders also lost in the Western Semi-Final once (2011) and in the Western Final four times (2009-10, 2013, 2015).
He’s well aware of the steps required to get to the big game — and the first step is to make the playoffs.
“You’re checking things off as you go,” he said. “As you get toward the end of the season, you’re checking off personal goals and you’re checking off team goals. You’re making check marks all the way until you get to the end.”
