COMMENTARY – NO NEED FOR NOSTRADAMUS

(Listen daily for the Rod Pedersen Commentary on Cat Country 98 & Rock 98.5 FM)

The inevitable occurred on Saturday when the Roughriders had their playoff hopes extinguished with an uninspired 32-21 home loss to the Calgary Stampeders.

It didn’t take Nostradamus to see where this Rider season was going and now with the team’s playoff hopes up in smoke, all that remains is one meaningless game this Saturday at Calgary.

Whether this team finishes with seven wins, or six, it really doesn’t matter. Missing the playoffs in a year where Saskatchewan is hosting the Grey Cup was unthinkable. Now it’s here.

And a few of us can see where it’s going, having the benefit of watching from the outside, but also getting plenty of information from the inside.

Cody Fajardo – once the lovable franchise quarterback and still the highest-paid Roughrider of all-time – is done here. That’s pretty evident and there’s plenty of time in the weeks and months ahead to dissect where that went wrong.

Could Cody have handled things better? Sure, definitely. But it says he here he wasn’t given the support he needed both on and off the field. However he’ll emerge stronger for this, somewhere else. He still has the tools that made him West Division MVP two seasons ago but that supporting cast is long gone.

If I had to bet on it, I’d say head coach Craig Dickenson will be coaching somewhere else next season too and that’s unfortunate. He was a finalist for Coach of the Year just two seasons ago but again, those were different times. It would be pretty hard to sell this season-ending six game losing streak and total implosion.

Frankly, it’s my belief, that Fajardo and Dickenson would be better off in a new environment. They’re winners, but this isn’t a winning franchise.

Not anymore.

The results speak for themselves. The talent has eroded and when former CFL coach Mike Kelly said on our show a few weeks back that “something’s wrong in Saskatchewan”, clearly he was right. It’s a culture thing.

I need to be careful with what I say only because some may feel it’s sour grapes, and that’s definitely not the case. Quite obviously I’ve got nothing to be sour about these days.

But as a lifelong Rider fan, it’s troubling to see where this franchise is at. It certainly feels like the 1990s all over again. Dozens of Rider fans came up at me at this weekend’s sports banquet in Lampman, SK looking for answers and I could see in their eyes they were hoping to be reassured that everything’s going to be alright.

But it’s not. Not anytime soon anyway.

If you’ve been around sports long enough, and in life, you can clearly see that success starts at the top. So does failure.

Losing the title of being the CFL’s flagship franchise to Winnipeg is no small feat. But the evidence is all right there for anyone brave enough to look at it. This has been prolonged failure, and you can’t blame Covid, injuries, the quarterback, the flu, food poisoning, or any of the long list this regime has already tried to fool you with.

What we’re seeing right now is why this franchise has just four Grey Cups in 112 years and why former President Jim Hopson was responsible for two of them.

The finger can be pointed as much as they want – and it will be – and an effort will be made to minimize what a colossal failure and embarrassment the 2022 season has become.

Don’t fall for it.

Unless there’s sweeping changes from top to bottom and the Rider Board of Directors has enough nerve to make them, not a lot is going to change. We’ll be partying like it’s 1999.

I don’t need Nostradamus to see that.

That’s today’s Rod Pedersen Commentary

(The Rod Pedersen Show airs daily at 12 pm ET on Game+ TV and WQEE Radio. Call your cable provider to subscribe. You can also watch on YouTube Live or listen 24/7 at RodPedersen.com/ListenLive)