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The Saskatchewan Roughriders entered the week with their eyes set on starting a new win streak, after a sub-par effort ended in a Week 6 home loss to the Calgary Stampeders.
It didn’t take long for the green and white to get the ball rolling in Vancouver as the Riders were able to tame the BC Lions, claiming a 33-27 victory on Saturday night.
Corey Mace, Roughriders Head Coach said it was great to see his squad bounce back the way they did.
“I’m just so proud of these guys, just how they responded from the pressure that they put on themselves,” he said. “It’s the players in the locker room that got to hold each other to a standard and make sure they meet that, and they were on top of that throughout the week.”
Roughriders quarterback Trevor Harris was impressive. He finished just shy of another 400-yard outing, going 23-30 for 395 passing yards, three touchdowns, and an interception.
Harris said after sitting with a bad loss for the whole week it was important to get back into the win column this week.
“The fact that we were able to get to five and one today and be able to flush that bad loss from us last week did feel good,” he said. “We’ll enjoy this for a couple hours and wake up tomorrow and start working on Edmonton.”
Wide receiver Dohnte Meyers shared some love for Harris after a remarkable game from the Riders quarterback.
“He was outstanding, he’s a leader, he prepares for it and he takes his work, his craft very seriously,” he said.
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The Riders jumped out to a quick 17-1 lead in the first quarter and never looked back. Saskatchewan took a 12-point lead to the locker room at half time after a field goal from Riders’ kicker Brett Lauther made it 23–11.
The Riders didn’t skip a beat in the second half. Harris found Meyers for the duo’s second touchdown of the game, just two and a half minutes into the third quarter.
Harris said he always feels good when Meyers is on the field.
“He’s a very competitive guy, he’s constantly asking how he can get better, and he’s just one of those guys where you feel good about him being out there,” he said. “Especially when he’s on the perimeter because he’s very fast, he can get behind defences and he’s very shifty and as you saw against Toronto if you get him the ball in the open field he can really go.”
Meyers and Harris were able to set the tone early in the first quarter and again in the third quarter and Meyers said they’ve been working all year on being able to keep their foot on the gas after jumping out to quick starts.
“We emphasize on starting fast and starting early, and we want to be aggressive. We know we’re (an) explosive offense,” he said. “We want to continue to be explosive throughout the game just because you start fast, we want to finish fast too.”
It was more of a quiet fourth quarter as the Riders were able to limit almost all of the offensive advances made by the Lions, but BC would score a last-minute touchdown to pull within six, and after last week’s game where Mace said the physicality wasn’t where it needed to be, he said that changed this week against BC.
“I thought specifically up front from a D line standpoint I know the sack total wasn’t anything crazy … they were rushing physically against that offensive line and forcing Nathan (Rourke) into some decisions he might not have wanted,” said Mace when asked how he thought the physicality from his defence looked against the Lions. “I did think from a physicality standpoint, certainly I liked what I saw without looking at statistics.”
It wasn’t all good news for the green and white though as running back Ka’Deem Carey left the game early with an apparent injury, Mace didn’t have an update on Carey’s status after the game but he said it sucks to see anyone go down.
“We understand what this game is but it does not ever make it any easier to see things like that happen,” he said.
The Riders now set their eyes on the Edmonton Elks who are 1-4 on the young season and coming off a bye-week, that game goes July 25 at Mosaic Stadium in Regina
