OUT OF THE TUNNEL: HERE WE GO!

BY: RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF

The long road to the 2019 Grey Cup in Calgary begins in earnest this week for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Saturday’s cutdown day had a few surprises with the release of Chad Geter and Crezdon Butler but all-in-all everything went as per the plan.

There are currently 53-players on the roster so there will still be a few changes leading up to Thursday’s season opener in Hamilton against the Tiger-Cats.

The roster mix is a pretty good one. This team is older with the addition of Solomon Elimimian, Micah Johnson, Jon Ryan, Manny Arceneaux and Cory Watson but there are some under-25 players that stepped up and made the roster.

Especially the Canadians.

With Cameron Judge, Dakoda Shepley, Justin McInnis, Brayden Lenius and Micah Teitz (an Out of the Tunnel fav!), this is an incredible base to build on for this and many seasons to come!!

This season will take some time for the roster to come together. Don’t be surprised if the Riders come out of the gate 2-and-4 or 3-and-5 and then have a tremendous second half of the season.

This is a playoff team, and in a tight West Division it may be a third- or fourth-place crossover team.

It was an up and down pre-season for the Riders. The game in Calgary (a 37-1 loss) was a bit of a dud as so many players played themselves out of a spot. Last Thursday’s game against Winnipeg (a 35-29 loss) had more bright spots with the brightest being the Rider offence under Zach Collaros.

The most impressive and hopeful part is that they went downfield more with Collaros re-kindling his relationship with Naaman Roosevelt.

For the Riders to be successful in 2019, it will be up to the offence to have a much better season than what hit the field in 2018.

But this week it will be the Rider defence that will have their hands full with a dynamic Hamilton offence.

The Ticats are led by Jeremiah Massoli who had himself a breakout 2018 and will be in control of a veteran laden roster.

It’s a veteran offensive line that is stacked with quality Canadians which creates holes for a familiar face in running back Cam Marshall.

The toughest assignment for the Rider defence is who will cover Brandon Banks? It will more than likely be up to Nick Marshall to cover one of the fastest receivers in the CFL. Marshall will make a big play or two this week but if last season is any indication he will also give up some big plays as well.

That said we will still make the key player on defence Nick Marshall and because of his great game this past Thursday, our key player for the Rider offence will be Naaman Roosevelt.

It’s an important few weeks for the Green and White. They have to begin the season with two straight road games against eastern opponents. A split is a must because going 0-2 to begin the season will make the road to climb in an incredibly tough West Division that much harder.

A few notes to cleanup the pre-season.

• There were grumblings about the Riders not streaming the final pre-season game from Mosaic Stadium.

While some were in favour of not streaming, the majority were left wondering why the Riders didn’t.

As a bit of background, the Riders have streamed two previous pre-season games. The first was back in the mid-to-late 2000’s when they put the game up on SaskTel on-demand with the second coming in 2014 against the Calgary Stampeders online.

Winnipeg boasted great numbers from their game-stream a couple weeks ago (12,000 viewers), but the Rider game in 2014 crushed those numbers with over 80-thousand unique views.

Those numbers mean the Riders would love to stream a game, and they would, but there is one problem — they can’t sell enough advertising to cover the costs.

The Riders’ goal is to be a championship team on and off the field, so they want to do more than just use the in-house cameras and the radio play-by-play. First, in-house cameras are for gameday atmosphere and generally not for broadcast (more fan shots, less replays and iso’s on players) and secondly the radio call has sponsors that are just for that station and not for the Riders organization. This makes it very expensive to put on a quality show for the fans as a whole separate crew is required (just like on game days when TSN brings in a fleet of people for the broadcast).

Recouping the money (to just break-even) is incredibly difficult because of the TSN/CFL broadcast contract. TSN gives the team the rights to broadcast and then the sponsors have to be approved by the league. For example, if Ford Canada wants to pay to be the presenting sponsor of the game, they can’t because Nissan is the official vehicle provider of the CFL.

This is why the Riders don’t stream the pre-season game. It’s about the money. It’s not because of ticket sales because if you were at the game, it appeared that people weren’t very interested in attending regardless of the game not being available online.

• Congrats to Neal Hughes and Kerry Joseph for being inducted into the 2019 Plaza of Honour.

These are two players who proved they were deserving of wearing the Green and White on and off the field each in their own way.

Hughes’ football life was in Saskatchewan. From RMF to playing for the Thom Trojans and then the Regina Rams (both junior and university versions) before spending 11 seasons with the Roughriders. He is one of the very few two-time Grey Cup winners with the Riders.

Joseph is a little different. He is being inducted solely on his 2007 season with the Riders. He picked up every individual award a quarterback could win along with leading the Riders to a 2007 Grey Cup victory.

There are four names hanging in the breeze that may or may not be inducted into the Plaza. Roy Shivers, Danny Barrett, Eric Tillman and Brendan Taman.

Tillman (once his CFL career is over) and Taman will more than likely be inducted very soon but Shivers and Barrett are a completely different story.

After two years of rebuilding, the duo of Shivers and Barrett put up a 46-44 record and five straight playoff appearances. Their downfall is that they couldn’t get over the hump and also the type of player they were bringing into the fold.

Based on record and success on the field alone, these two should be shoe-ins for the Plaza. Either the committee doesn’t want them inducted or they want no part of the organization, it could be many years before we see this large part of Rider history in the Plaza of Honour.

• Finally, to our Out of the Tunnel predictions! In the West, any combination of the five teams will not surprise us but the East is a pretty easy one to predict.

West Division

1. Calgary Stampeders

2. B.C. Lions

3. Edmonton Eskimos

4. Saskatchewan Roughriders

5. Winnipeg Blue Bombers

East Division

1. Hamilton Tiger-Cats

2. Toronto Argonauts

3. Ottawa Redblacks

4. Montreal Alouettes

(RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF)