THE LATEST ON THE RIDERS

Saskatchewan Roughriders General Manager Brendan Taman was on the SportsCage on Monday providing an update on Canada’s Team, particularly on last week’s CFL GM meetings in Toronto and the CFL National Combine.  Here are some of the quotes:

IS THERE A KORY SHEETS UPDATE?

BT:  Not much to update.  I think he is still going through some medical testing and I think there’s still some conjecture on when or if he’ll be ready to play this year.  Not that he won’t be, but I think there’s still some long roads to go down on his health.

WILL SUNSERI AND GLENN BOTH BE ON THE ROSTER IN 2015?

BT:  The plan is very, very simple.  We’re going to take the three best quarterbacks – if not the four best quarterbacks – and have them on our team.  Whether it’s Tino, Kevin and Doege (behind Durant) or whatever combination you come up with.  If it’s Darian, Kevin and Tino and they’re the best three, that’s who’s going to be on our team.  When Corey and his staff come to us and say these are our three best quarterbacks, then it’s our job to figure out how to fit them in and that’s what we will do.

WHAT WAS YOUR INVOLVEMENT ON THE RULES COMMITTEE?

BT:  I was representing our team on the Rules Committee.  Normally that’s been Jim Hopson’s responsibility in the past but with him moving on, they assigned me to that.  So I got to sit in on that lengthy discussion about the varying number of rules and it was quite interesting to say the least.  On top of that we had some GM meetings in addition to that.  I literally had three or four full days of meetings.

WHAT GOES ON IN THOSE ROOMS?

BT:  You listen to Wally and Hufnagel lecture everybody on how the league should work and you say ‘okay’.  Glen Johnson in the Rules Committee meetings does a really good job of explaining things.  You go around the room with thoughts but the older guys that have been in the league are the ones that control the meetings.  But there are guys like myself, Ed Hervey, Kyle Walters, Mike O’Shea and the other people all have input.  It’s a lengthy, long, detailed process and as you can imagine, with nine teams with a different opinion on each rule, it’s like herding cats.

ARE THE PROPOSED CHANGES ALL HUFF AND WALLY’S IDEA?

BT:  I wouldn’t say that but they control the discussions during those meetings just because of the length of time in the league.  Jim Popp’s another one and they have really strong opinions.  Personally that won’t change my mind but Glen does a very good job of organizing things.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE PROPOSED CHANGES?

BT:  We talked about that five yard halo on punt returns at length and it wasn’t too long ago we had 15 yards in place for the bouncing of the ball.  Then we went to five and then they were talking about going back to 15 and I was like, ‘Geez Marie’.  I’m like you a bit in being a traditionalist but the mandate from the league was to open up the game and create more exciting play in our game.  Some of those changes will dictate that for sure.  Saskatchewan was in favour of most of them, but not all.

HOW IS THE 5-YARD BUMPER FOR DB’S ANY DIFFERENT THAN BEFORE?

BT:  It’s funny you say that because if you implement the rules the way we have them, that’ll work.  But the problem is we’re not doing that.  What we’re trying to do is have it so it’s black and white for the refs.  After five yards you can’t touch the guy right?  The problem with that is as a DB, I look at it from the defensive side, and as a DB, I’m worried for those guys because their ability to play this game has changed quite dramatically.  To not allow you to touch a guy after five yards is a dramatic change to the way we play the game.  You’re going to get receivers trying to push off a guy and get Offensive P-I brought into the thing.  The whole intent of this thing is to make it easier, whether or not we’ve done it, we’ll wait and see.

WHERE DOES REGINA WR ADDISON RICHARDS FIT INTO THE DRAFT?

BT:  What’s hurting Addison this year compared to past drafts is that he’s in a very deep, strong draft.  If he was coming out last year, I’d be quite confident that he’d be a first round pick.  I’m not not sure he will be this year because of the depth of the draft.  Whether he’s 1, 4, 8 or 12, regardless of where he gets picked, he’s a great football player.

WHAT ABOUT HIS DESIRE TO BE DRAFTED BY THE RIDERS?

BT:  It means a lot.  You don’t want to pick guys from Eastern Canada that don’t want to play in Saskatchewan, that’s for sure.  When a guy says he wants to play in Regina and is a Regina guy, that sure helps.  What’s interesting is what does it do to the other teams?  We might be the benefactors of that but when we pick at #6 we have to pick the best guy that’s available that can help our team at that time.