Everyone in Saskatchewan was deflated when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers beat the Montreal Alouettes on their last play field goal an hour before the kickoff of the Saskatchewan Roughrider game with the Calgary Stampeders on Oct. 26. Unfortunately, the Rider players were among the deflated.
Riders offensive lineman Logan Ferland said the team vibe was off after the Blue Bombers victory. Riders head coach Corey Mace said they didn’t have their juice that night, which ended in a 27-12 loss for Saskatchewan.
My vibe was also off. By half time I had stopped taking notes. There did not seem any point. I was wrong for there was a Roughrider who was excited about the game. Third string quarterback Jack Coan played the last couple minutes of the first half and the whole second half. It was his first CFL game experience. I should have been making notes of his play.
What had been hard for him was the week leading up to the game. He said it was hard emotionally as he was not sure if he would play.
He said it felt great. He continued that it was so much fun to be out there. He finally got a chance to see what he could do on the field. He was not sure how he would react to the speed of the game as he tried to go through his reads.
The Stampeders came hard with blitzes. He said he expected them to come after him as a young quarterback.
He played alright considering he was effectively running the second string offence.
He completed 10-of-21 passes for 100 yards including a touchdown on a nice throw to Jerreth Sterns. He looked to the right and then came back to the middle hitting Sterns in stride at the goal line.
The touchdown was a great moment for him. Sterns was excited for Coan. He said Coan works hard every day. He is at the stadium early and late.
I said I thought he could have run on at least a couple of plays. He said he is not the fastest as verified by his 4.90 speed in the 40 yard dash.
Coan’s road to the CFL is the winding route of many young men.
He grew up on Long Island, which he said does not have too many well known football players.
He spent most of his college career in Wisconsin. He did not find too much culture shock moving from the New York City area to the Mid-West. He said Madison, where the University of Wisconsin is located, was super fun.
For his final year of college he was the starting quarterback for Notre Dame University.
He was undrafted by the NFL. He tried out for the Indianapolis Colts and was cut.
He played a season of XFL football with the San Antonio Brahmas before signing with the Riders this past spring.
I asked Corey Mace about learning from the game. He spoke about speaking to the guys about dealing with adverse situations.
I feel the Riders had faced adverse situations through the year and I thought there would have been a better reaction this game. I was wrong.
What I learned was that the Stampeder first stringers are still better than the Riders second and third stringers no matter how bad the Stampeder season was this year.
Of course, everything would have been different for excitement and intensity had Jason Maas given different instructions to his kick returner on the 61 yard missed Winnipeg field goal. Had he told him to let the ball go through the end zone or be played in the end zone and given up a single the Alouettes would have had the ball at their 53 yard line with 1:05 or less to go in the game. With Winnipeg without a timeout the game would have been over. Even with a bad punt after a pair of running plays the Bombers would have got the ball inside their 30 with 10 seconds at most to go in the game.
Bill Selnes, who’s based in Melfort, has written about the Saskatchewan Roughriders since the late 1970s. He was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, Football Reporters of Canada wing on Nov. 24, 2013.
