THE MONDAY MORNING GOALIE FOR FRIENDS OF THE RIDERS TOUCHDOWN LOTTERY

GOING DOWN THIS ROAD AGAIN

REGINA – Who, really, didn’t see this coming?

The Saskatchewan Roughriders concluded a disappointing season with a 41-18 loss in B.C. on Saturday night which left their record at 5-13 for 2016.

That, we didn’t necessarily see coming, but this Darian Durant contract saga has been predictable from the get-go.  And it appears to be getting worse by the day.

I was surprised in early September when Roughriders Head Coach & GM Chris Jones admitted at a pregame news conference that talks had opened on a new contract for Durant, and they’d flow as comfortably as Durant wanted.  Jones implied that Durant has earned that much after all he’s accomplished over his 11-year career.

However the saga dragged along ever-so-slowly week by week causing me to mention on air, “The longer this goes, the worse it is for Durant re-signing.“

“Naaaaah,” I was mocked by my inner circle. “You don’t know what you’re talking about”.  But I’ve seen situations like this unravel even in my own career.

I’ve got to give the Regina media a ton of credit. They sniffed out last week that the talks had seemed to have cooled – soured even – and they pressed Durant for an update last Tuesday.  However Darian preferred to deflect their prying questions saying by him giving daily updates, it wouldn’t help the situation.

And that all led up to Sunday morning’s events in the Rider locker room on the team’s annual Garbage Bag Day.

Durant didn’t even want to address the media in the first place – sensing a feeding frenzy – but he was encouraged to do so by team staff.

What followed was a 7-minute Question & Answer session between Durant and local reporters in which Darian reported that the talks were “pretty much at a standstill” and that he was “very disappointed” with how things have played out.

At this point, things don’t look very good but talks could start up again with a simple phone call between the Riders and Durant’s Vancouver-based agent Dan Vertlieb.  The problem is, as of Sunday afternoon no talks were scheduled.

After speaking with both sides on Sunday, I’ve learned that Durant is content to live with another huge paycut which would drop his annual salary to the $350,000 range.  That would – I’m told – make him the 6th highest-paid quarterback in the CFL.

We don’t need to get into what the Riders are reportedly countering with or the reasons why, but suffice it to say the Durant camp is somewhat stunned that their offer hasn’t been deemed acceptable.

It’s been made clear to me that they won’t go any lower, and that’s why talks have broken off.

Durant’s numbers this season speak for themselves.  He finished as the league’s 4th-highest passer on a generally woeful offense that had tons of moving parts week-to-week, not to mention a sub-standard offensive line.  The hits he took in Week 17 caused him to miss the team’s final game in Vancouver.

If the Riders hadn’t had Durant this season, where would they be?

And more importantly, where would this football club be without him moving forward?  There doesn’t appear to be a Jonathan Jennings waiting in the wings.

As one source close to Durant told me on Sunday, “Darian would be crushed if he’s not the guy opening up that new stadium.”

And that’s why this situation has so many troubling similarities to what Henry Burris went through with the Riders in 2005 and Kerry Joseph in 2008.

Those two franchise quarterbacks had accomplished a lot with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and wanted to be compensated accordingly.

They both wound up playing elsewhere the following season.

However in this case Durant is willing to take another hefty paycut in order to stay with the franchise he loves so much.

That’s why he’s scratching his head today, and feeling “very disappointed”.

So what’s next?  I still predict Darian Durant will be back with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2017.

But it won’t come before some more hard feelings, and perhaps some persuasion from the Rider Nation.

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Roughriders Assistant V.P. of Player Personnel John Murphy graciously appeared on 620 CKRM’s pregame show prior to Saturday’s game at B.C. and outlined the club’s plans for the off-season leading up to the 2017 campaign.

While there will be another lengthy series of free agent camps all across the U.S. Sunbelt this winter (already beginning later this month), don’t expect to see the Green & White employ another 100 different players next season.

The core of the football club is basically set.

Murphy

“What you want is the foundation that’s there, get three or four of these young guys signed, get the quarterback position solidified, and just engage at a certain couple of spots in the off-season where it’s an obvious need,” Murphy explained.

“Depending on how we are with our Canadian offensive linemen and what shape they look to be in between now and free agency, that would be an obvious spot.

“And then I think improvement in depth at the O-line – the tackle spots are an obvious necessity – and again, you see a lot of good things at receiver, Joe McKnight did great things at running back and Willie Jefferson came in and helped the pass rush.  The other couple of spots are the guys in the secondary and they came in and played very well at times.  We missed two of them in B.C. – Kacy Rodgers and Justin Cox – but if we get those guys back and if the ratio doesn’t dictate who you play at safety, I think that’ll let Chris do more things with the pass rush if the back-end is secure.”

He didn’t stop there.

“And then I would say our kicker and punter, that’s as good of combination on special teams as there is in the league,” Murphy continued.  “What we need to do is find that dynamic returner that has allowed this team to be very good on special teams in the past.  That’s one of the top three things we’d be looking for in the off-season.”

The search is already on.

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Of course it would be improper to look ahead so soon without adequately assessing 2016.

This season was enjoyable for me.  Unlike the 3-15 season of 2015 which felt like three seasons rolled into one (none of which seemed to end), this year was one of historic growth.

The fruits of the labour of the first half were evident during a four-game win streak in late-September and early-October.  They eaked out some tight victories and then topped it off with a 29-11 demolition of the Argonauts in Toronto on October 15.

Then, injuries hit again and some old bad habits returned as the club finished the season on a listless three game losing streak.

Linebacker Jeff Knox surmised that the team got “too high” during that win streak and began “half-assing it” out on the field.

Jones and Murphy mentioned several times that the last game of the year in Vancouver would demonstrate who’s serious about being on this football club next season.

And then … that.

After the game Rider fans were justifiably restless that after 18 weeks of auditions and an endless parade of players on and off the roster, Saturday’s performance was the best the Riders could come up with.

Perhaps sensing some pending hostility, Chris Jones pointed on CKRM’s postgame show Saturday night that “14 or 16 starters” were left at home.

It’s true, there were several game-changers on the injured list like Durant, Justin Cox, Armanti Edwards, Jeff Fuller, Ricky Collins, Greg Jones, Kacy Rodgers and the two star linemen who’d missed almost all of the season in Brendon Labatte and Chris Best.

In short, don’t judge the 2016 Saskatchewan Roughriders by what you saw at B.C. Place in the finale.

Carteri

Longtime Rider Radio colour man Carm Carteri put a bow nicely on the season on our postgame show.

“Expectations were so high for this team to start the year and then we realized it was kind of an extended training camp mentality,” Carteri said.  “Well it felt like training camp all over again in B.C. Saturday night.  It felt like a team with a lot of guys – we didn’t know who they were – and they played like that on the field because they didn’t play together.”

“It’s not anything I don’t think this organization can be proud of after 18 weeks of a training camp, to end it the way they ended it in B.C., losing 41-18.  Not good for Coach Jones and his staff.  They’ve got a lot of tinkering to do this off-season I think.”

And the off-season starts now, with the Durant contract situation on the front-burner.

Again, I have to say the 2016 season was refreshing in many ways but most notably because of the fashion I was treated by Chris Jones, John Murphy, Jeremy O’Day and the entire organization.

At first it was nice just to be treated like a human being again, but we were further welcomed back on the team flights and Jones employed an open door policy that extended to the radio crew.

I certainly have no issues with these guys.

There’s absolutely no question that Chris Jones knows what he’s doing and his leadership qualities are legendary.  There were some bumps in his first year as a CFL General Manager but he appears to be a man that doesn’t make the same mistake twice.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are on their way to prominence again.

Really the only two disturbing factors are that the CFL Playoffs have eluded Canada’s Team for a second-straight year, and that we now have a long, cold seven month off-season staring us in the face.

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RP
@rodpedersen

www.realtyoneregina.com