The Saskatchewan Roughriders faced the music and not a single chord was heard.
There was a shocking silence in the Green and White’s locker room at Mosaic Stadium on Saturday after the previously winless Edmonton Elks posted a 42-31 Canadian Football League victory.
Following the Roughriders’ previous three home games, the music was blaring, the players were beaming, and interviewers were doing their darnedest to hear the post-game comments amid the victory celebration.
There weren’t any such challenges on Aug. 3, 2024, when every syllable was clearly audible.
Some of the most emphatic words were uttered in defence of Head Coach Corey Mace, who had made his message clear shortly before the locker room was opened to the media.
- “I’ve just got to give credit to (the Elks). They came out and played hard. We did not match that intensity and that’s right here on my shoulders.”
- “It just didn’t look like us. I’ve got to do a better job of getting these guys prepared to play.”
- “I have to get these guys ready to play a football game.”
Those comments prompted a Cretaceous correspondent to inquire about messaging.
From Day 1, Mace has underlined the importance of accountability — and there he was, after the 5-3 Roughriders’ sloppiest showing of the season — accepting full responsibility.
“It’s not really a message,” Mace said. “It’s just the truth.
“We are the Riders and I’m the head coach of this team. We did not look like ourselves. That’s solely on me.
“We were not ready to play tonight. I have to do a better job in sending a message to get us ready to play a football game.
“For the first time this year, I did not think we looked like ourselves. That is on my shoulders.”
But his shoulders were on the sideline.
What about the people who were actually on the field?
How does one establish a balance between accepting responsibility as a coach and assessing breakdowns that take place on an expansive, 87,750-square-foot playing surface?
“That’s part of it,” Mace replied, “but we couldn’t even get ourselves out of the holes there. It started to snowball.
“It can’t just be about a rah-rah speech or anything like that. It’s got to be about the details in what we’re doing and how we’re executing things.
“When I go upstairs and take a look at the film, defensively speaking, I’ll see if it was truly schematic where they caught us or if it was just strictly a matter where we weren’t ready to play.”
What is a coach to do, a seasoned scribe was left to wonder, after a pass is dropped, a tackle is missed, an assignment is blown, or a costly penalty is assessed?
“That is not on Coach Mace,” always-candid defensive tackle Micah Johnson stated after his 150th career CFL game. “That ain’t on our staff. That’s on the players.
“We were prepared. We felt like we were prepared coming into the game.
“That’s on us. We’ve got to look in the mirror. In my opinion, we let the staff down today in a lot of ways.”
The head coach, however, would not go there.
“That’s Mace being the stand-up guy he is — the coach he is,” Johnson continued. “He wants to take that on the chin for the team, but that’s on the locker room, 100 per cent.”
Across the locker room, Mario Alford also spoke up for Mace.
“He’s a great leader,” the Roughriders’ special teams standout said after a game that began when he returned a kickoff 101 yards for a touchdown.
“We all abide by his rules and go with what he says, but that loss is not on him, even though he said it was.
“It’s on us as a team. He doesn’t actually go out there and physically play. I respect a man like that who takes that but, at the end of the day, we’re the ones who play.”
