CHRIS JONES PREGAME NEWS CONFERENCE NOTES

Jones Wednesday at Mosaic Stadium

Roughriders Head Coach & General Manager Chris Jones held his day-before news conference at Mosaic Stadium over the noon hour on Wednesday.  The 0-0 Riders host the 0-1 Toronto Argonauts Thursday night at 8:00 pm in the final home-opener at Mosaic Stadium.  Here are some notes from the gathering:

– Looking very forward to the game.  We have some excellent players with a lot of character and we look forward to seeing where we stack up.

– Everybody’s a work in progress.  As you saw last week, everybody thought that Edmonton and Calgary were the world-beaters right?  They ended up going out and getting beat so we gotta play a solid football game against a very good football team in Toronto.  They’re very well coached and they didn’t play very well last week.  We’re not the only ones that know that — they know it as well.  You’ll see a different Toronto team roll in here.

– We’re going to be very good (on defense).  We’re going to be very fast, very athletic, and look forward to seeing exactly how we play.  Starters don’t matter for us.  We’ve got a lot of guys that can play.  We rotate a lot.  Willie Jefferson was probably one of the better D-ends in the league last year and didn’t start a single game.  So I don’t read a lot into “starters”.  I’ll leave that up to you guys.

– Newsome and #99 are good football players, as is Shawn Lemon.  We’ll package all three of those in together at some times.

– That’ll be decided tomorrow night (team cohesion).  Like I told the team today, this is for real now.  It’s a regular season game and we’ve talked a good game.  Now it’s a matter of seeing where we are.

– (On the 7-story high Darian Durant banner):  I didn’t know there was a banner out there.  That’s news to me.  Hahaha.  That’s news to me.  I’ll try to see if I can take a look at it today.

– (On pressure on Darian Durant – real and figurative):  Quite honestly that is what it is.  We’ve got to have great play from Andrew Jones at right guard and Greg Jones at middle linebacker.  Quarterback’s a very important piece.  Don’t understate that, but he needs to let the system work for him.  Just come in and be Darian Durant, nothing above that.

– (On the 8:00 pm start):  Personally I try to just focus on what I can control.  Start time of games is nothing something that’s dictated by Chris Jones.  I’ll let the league handle all that stuff, and TSN.

– First of all, Curtis Steele is a very high character guy who I’ve known for a long time.  You can play him on any special team, you have to protect him from himself. The one injury he got in camp was he jumped in with the B group and C group offensive line trying to give somebody a blow on his own.  That’s the kinds of guys you want to surround yourself with.

– Coach Stubler’s defense has been around a long time and his defense has been very good for a long time.  And they score a lot of touchdowns themselves.  He’s a tough guy to prepare for so we just have to come out and play Rider football.

– I look forward to seeing how physical we’ll be and if we’ll establish ourselves physically.  That’s been our focus all week and I hope we come out and do that.

– Chris Best is injured.  It’s day-to-day.

*That’s it for now.  Tune into the SportsCage at 4:00 pm live from the Jon Ryan Wednesday Night Live event.  Our guests include TSN 1290 Winnipeg’s Troy Westwood, Rider running backs coach Craig Davoren and Toronto sportscaster Jim “Clubber” Lang.

RP
@rodpedersen