RIDERS READY TO OPEN MINICAMP, RELEASE FOUR

BRADENTON, FL – The Saskatchewan Roughriders 2018 Florida 2-Day Minicamp opens Tuesday morning at IMG Academy (8:30 am ET). Head Coach & GM Chris Jones appeared on 620 CKRM’s SportsCage on Monday in Bradenton and talked about the camp.


WHY THE CUTDOWN FROM 3 DAYS TO 2?

Actually it’s a day longer. We had two days of workouts with about 90 unsigned guys that we’ve worked out across the country. We had a dwindling down process from there. We had four practices with them, to decide who would mix with the guys we already had signed. So now we’ve got two days with this group. We had to spend a few days with our QBs too, as Zach Collaros is new and we have two veteran guys who haven’t had a lot of reps. Plus we can’t practice signed guys with unsigned guys anymore. That’s why we had to do it this way.


WHY IS THIS THE SMALLEST MINICAMP GROUP YOU’VE HAD?

It’s 30 guys. 32 I think. All it is is we’ve got a good roster and we’re just gonna make sure they get enough reps and a chance to compete. We’re looking for a few guys to battle with our DBs and receivers and you always have to know who your next guy up is.


WHAT HAVE THE PAST 48 HOURS BEEN LIKE?

We had some real tough decisions this morning. We would’ve liked to have taken 3 or 4 more from the tryout camp because it was probably the most-talented group we’ve ever had here in Florida. We’ll take 20 over, plus the 10 or 11 we already had signed and invited to the camp. It’s a cutdown policy all the time.


HOW IS THE 2018 ROUGHRIDERS TEAM SHAPING UP?

I’m excited. We’ve got a really athletic group. This group of O-line/D-line, the last two days, you could start a CFL team off of what we had. We had to cut some awful good guys and they’re guys we’ll put on our board for the future. It’s been really, really good talent and competition. We’re going to take the best of what we see out of a very good group and adding them to a very good roster.