Let’s look back — waaaaaaaay back — to 2013 B.C.
Ten years ago this coming Wednesday, the Saskatchewan Roughriders opposed the host B.C. Lions and confidence, at least externally, was waning.
Following an 8-1 start — the best in franchise history — the Roughriders lost four games in succession with a Regina-based Grey Cup game fast approaching.
Fans and media types were routinely roasting the Roughriders who, as I observed in the best-selling, Oct. 4, 2013 edition of the Regina Leader-Post, were “mired in a morass of misery for most of September.”
The unrest escalated to the point where quarterback Darian Durant reached a boiling point, as evidenced by his use of an expletive in an exchange with a detractor on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Oh … and there was this: The Roughriders had a mere five days between road games that were separated by 4,500 kilometres.
Ten years ago today, Saskatchewan fell 17-12 to the host Montreal Alouettes, whereupon my column was headlined: Riders are simply lost.
Oh?
With scant practice time leading up to the looming game in Vancouver, the Green and White proceeded to win 31-17.
The 2013 Roughriders lost only one more game of consequence en route to capturing the fourth championship in franchise history.
The punctuation mark was a 45-23 Grey Cup victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Nov. 24, 2013.
A decade later, another celebration of the 2013 team is fast approaching.
On Oct. 7 — Legends Night, presented by Purolator — the Roughriders are to play host to Hamilton.
At halftime, the 2013 Roughriders will be formally inducted, en masse, into the SaskTel Plaza of Honour.
In addition to recognizing the winners of the 101st Grey Cup game, the Roughriders organization will posthumously induct Wendy Kelly as a builder. The first female to serve on the community-owned team’s Board of Directors, Kelly was also the Production Manager for the 2013 Grey Cup Gala.
That year’s Festival was enhanced by the presence of the Green and White in the big game, not even two months after the “morass of misery” had enveloped Riderville.
Lately, there are signs of a comparably morose mood on the streets and across the World Wide Web.
Saskatchewan has lost three games in a row heading into Friday’s road date with the Lions.
The lesson we learned nearly 10 years ago, and on countless other occasions, is that a team can (and often does) emerge from a tailspin.
Consider the Roughriders’ four championship teams, all of which have overcome some struggles.
1966: After a 7-2 start, the Roughriders went winless in four games (three losses, one tie).
1989: A 4-1 start was followed by four defeats in succession. After rebounding with back-to-back wins, Saskatchewan suffered another two losses to fall to 6-7.
2007: The Roughriders were 7-2 before losing three straight games.
2013: See above.
Also submitted for your consideration is the 1997 season, in which the Roughriders were 6-8 — as they are today — and seemingly devoid of hope.
Saskatchewan chugged into the playoffs at 8-10, having lost 55-9 to the host Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the regular-season finale, before posting upset victories in Calgary and Edmonton and advancing to the Grey Cup.
Of course, just because such a turnaround has happened before, there isn’t any guarantee that the Roughriders will robustly reverse their fortunes.
But what precedent does tell us is that a Rider rebound is hardly beyond the realm of possibility.
Jeremy O’Day should know.
Now the Roughriders’ General Manager and Vice-President of Football Operations, he was the starting centre with the 2007 Grey Cup champions. When the Roughriders next won a title, six years later, he was the Assistant GM.
What lessons can be extracted from those experiences and perhaps applied today?
“Everyone has challenges during the season and there’s ups and downs,” O’Day replied. “The message you try to give them is most teams that win the Grey Cup go through ups and downs at some point in the season, but you also don’t want them to think it’s OK to go through those.
“When you go through those tough times, if you get through them and you’re still together and you still have that closeness with each other, then it makes you stronger as the year goes on.”
O’Day saw that several times over 12 seasons as a player with the Roughriders.
In 2003, the Roughriders were the only team to lose to Hamilton, which otherwise went 0-17.
“They ruined our perfect season,” Tiger-Cats quarterback Danny McManus classically quipped.
That setback, as much of a forehead-slapper as it was at the time, did not prevent the Roughriders from going 11-7 and posting their first winning record since 1994.
The 2004 edition, a 9-9 team, would have staged a home playoff game if not for three losses to a Winnipeg entry that otherwise went 4-11. But, ultimately, the Roughriders rallied and extended the 13-5 Lions to overtime in the West final at BC Place.
At one point in the summer of 2009, the Roughriders were on a 2-4 skid. They went on to earn top spot in the West for the first time in 33 years.
The 2010 Roughriders were 9-4 before losing four games in a row.
They hardly looked like a juggernaut entering the playoffs, but nonetheless won back-to-back games and secured a second consecutive Grey Cup berth.
As recently as 2019, Saskatchewan shrugged off a 1-3 start in Year 1 of the O’Day/Craig Dickenson regime and ended up sporting the best record in the West (13-5).
So here we are in 2023, a seesaw season that breaks down into spasms of 3-1, 1-4, 2-0 and 0-3 heading into Friday’s game.
Could another upturn, perhaps resembling that of 2013, be in the offing?
“That’s what I’d love to see moving forward — that we come out of this after going through those challenges and start building some momentum,” O’Day said.
“It’s said 1,000 times before the season is over, but you want to be playing the best football going into (the stretch). That was the example in ’13. I thought we started to get some momentum and it was kind of a slow build.
‘That’s still possible for this season. Once it starts building and building, it can create a great environment. That’s what we’re hopeful for.
“I think we’ve got the players who are capable of doing it. It’s just a matter of going out and playing well.”
Starting tonight, ideally, in the very same venue where the Roughriders’ history-making late-season surge began during that unforgettable autumn of 2013.
