Rob Vanstone: Excellence comes to the fore — Roughriders retain all four quarterbacks
After a protracted period of deliberation, the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ football-operations brain trust opted for a quarterback keeper.
The team retained all four quarterbacks who saw action in Friday’s pre-season finale — a 28-16 victory over the host Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Trevor Harris, who went 4-for-4 for 72 yards and one touchdown in his single series, will start in the June 11 regular-season opener against the Edmonton Elks at Commonwealth Stadium.
By all indications, Shea Patterson will be the short-yardage specialist — and an excellent one at that. Witness the 38 yards he gained on eight carries versus Winnipeg.
Mason Fine and Jake Dolegala, both of whom went 17-for-23 during the pre-season, both survived Saturday’s CFL cutdown deadline. One of them will serve as the No. 2 quarterback, behind Harris.
In hindsight, the decision to embrace all four quarterbacks should not be even remotely surprising.
Head Coach Craig Dickenson repeatedly stated during Coors Light Riders Training Camp that he intends to dress three quarterbacks during the regular season. It makes eminent good sense, then, to keep a fourth signal-caller for insurance and developmental purposes. The math, in this case, isn’t at all complicated.
And besides, nobody played their way off the team. In fact, the opposite is true.
The competition for the No. 2 spot was too close to call very early in training camp, which began May 14, and very little (if anything) changed over the subsequent three weeks.
The uber-athletic Patterson appears to have found a niche as a specialist, based on the impressive manner in which he operated the short-yardage team on Friday, but it would be sheer folly to typecast him as strictly a situational player.
Keep in mind that Patterson completed 10 of 14 passes for 77 yards and one TD in a 30-27 pre-season victory over the B.C. Lions on May 27 at Mosaic Stadium.
It just helps, in his case, that the short-yardage capabilities are part of his repertoire.
Then you have the skill sets of Fine and Dolegala, both of whom performed so well during training camp and the pre-season that it was virtually impossible to differentiate between the two.
It is much easier to do that when the eyeball test is used as a gauge.
Dolegala is 6-foot-7. Fine is 5-foot-11.
Dolegala is blessed with jaw-dropping arm talent and a nimbleness afoot that belies his size. He rushed three times for 23 yards in each pre-season game.
Fine carried the ball just once, for one yard, over those two contests.
Unlike Dolegala, Fine cannot throw the ball from one time zone to another with a mere flick of the wrist.
But there hasn’t been nearly enough commentary about and appreciation for what Fine can do.
During the pre-season, he threw three touchdown passes in an equivalent number of quarters.
In the opener, he shrugged off an interception that was returned for a score and threw back-to-back fourth-quarter TD passes to Mitch Picton to rally the Roughriders from a 27-17 deficit.
Fine followed up on Friday with another payoff pitch — a perfectly placed five-yarder to Kalija Lipscomb. It was a touchdown pass and a touch pass. A neat trick, that.
With five minutes left in the third quarter, it was time for Dolegala to take over. Fine had set the bar at a level that demanded excellence from the next man up.
Dolegala’s first series ended with a field goal.
He was then at the controls for most of an 13-play, 74-yard TD drive. Patterson took over for the final two plays, the last of which was a one-yard TD run.
To begin the Roughriders’ next possession, Dolegala scrambled for nine yards. He then handed off for six plays in succession as Saskatchewan exhausted most of the time that remained at IG Field.
Even after the game, the clock kept ticking away.
Saturday’s cutdown deadline was nigh.
Who would stay? Who would go?
Asked specifically about the quarterback competition, Harris said: “I’m glad I don’t have to make the decisions.”
There wasn’t a decision to be made, as it turned out.
Keep ’em all!
Why not?
With such a premium being placed on quarterbacking across the football universe, the Roughriders did not face the imperative of cutting anyone. Accommodations can be made for everyone, so why donate a talented quarterback to a rival team?
Now it is simply a matter of tiering — an intriguing topic in its own right, but one that can serve as column fodder for another day.
The Dolegala/Fine/Patterson scenario brings to mind a long-ago conversation I had with a veteran football coach. When I asked him what it was like to release a player, I presumed that the process would be described as something that exacted an emotional toll.
Instead, he was crustily dispassionate.
“I don’t cut players,” he growled. “The players cut themselves.”
The inference being: Performance dictates the decisions.
Essentially, that is what transpired in the case of the 2023 Roughriders, vis-a-vis the quarterbacks who will serve as understudies to Harris.
Fine, Dolegala and Patterson are distinctive in terms of what they bring to the tablsse, but uncannily and applaudably similar in one respect.
There wasn’t one compelling reason to dissolve ties with any of them.
So here they stay, beyond cutdown day.
