THROWIN’ ELBOWS WITH BRENDAN MCGUIRE

1. ROUGHRIDERS, PROVINCE MUST SHOW LEADERSHIP: Empty seats approaching 10-thousand (I’m totally guesstimating, here) in each of the Roughriders last two home games should be enough to convince them and our provincial government to take action in this still-not-over fight against the coronavirus. As I limped and struggled to give away my two tickets for both games, two people told me they would love to go but are holding off since their young kids can’t be vaccinated yet and they are fearful of bringing the delta variant home from the game to their unprotected children. The Riders and the province are failing in that regard if they aren’t pro-actively taking reasonable measures to make those of us at the park feel safe. Both need to take the lead of 7 of the other 8 CFL franchises (Edmonton Elks still the only other holdout as of this writing) and require proof of vaccination in order to gain entry to home games after labour day. Our Premier has done a masterful job in managing this pandemic so far and the packed house for opening night was the first such great event for our country in this awful time. But burying their heads in the sand on this any longer will simply not do. 

2. FAJARDO NO LONGER A ONE-HIT WONDER: If we weren’t sure about Cody Fajardo’s staying power as the Saskatchewan Roughriders franchise quarterback at the onset of training camp, we are now. It might be only three games into the season for a team that has gotten fat off some easy eastern opponents through a home-exclusive schedule, but you do not put up the incredible production with the level of enthusiasm he has shown every day without carrying some magic in your backpack. He calls it ‘Sprinkles of Jesus’. For those of us not-so-religious, we call it ‘Sprinkles of Cody’. There is no more accurate way to describe what we are witnessing than to suggest it feels like we are watching the making of a superstar. And I’m not exaggerating, either.  

3. RIDER DEFENSIVE BACKS KEY TO BEATING REDBLACKS: As someone who admits to knowing almost nothing about evaluating a pro football defence, I am certain the Roughrider defensive secondary won them that game on Saturday night. Ottawa QB Matt Nichols had plenty of moments where he had time in the pocket and couldn’t find open receivers, despite what Nichols told reporters after the fact. Take a bow Loucheiz Purifoy, Blace Brown, Mike Edem, Ed Gainey and Nick Marshall. You get my game ball. 

4. NAME FOR SASKATCHEWAN-BORN RECEIVING CORPS: The Saskatchewan Air Show. Has a better ring to it than ‘Saskatchewan Air Force’ and a fitting tribute to the great event so many of us grew up with each summer at 15-wing Moose Jaw. My dad and I had almost zero in common about anything but always bonded with our father-son trips to the Saskatchewan Air Show and we weren’t the only ones. Brayden Lenius and Mitchell Picton have big shoes to fill if they are to leave anywhere near the impression on our youth that the show in Moose Jaw did.    

5. BIGGEST RIDER SURPRISE SO FAR: The offensive line. Brendon LaBatte can stay retired if they keep this up. In fact, the Roughriders might want him to come back if him staying away saves a big salary and keeps continuity with this group. Not suggesting he wouldn’t come in handy if they need an injury replacement down the stretch but it’s looking more and more like this group has moved on from him as much as he’s moved on from them. That’s pro football.  

6. THIS WEEK I’M JEALOUS OF: Brett Lauther. The Roughrider kicker is perfect at his job through three weeks going 9 for 9, including the five he knocked through on Saturday. How many of us can brag that we’ve ever been perfect at our job for three whole weeks? 

7. DINWIDDIE’S QB SWITCHEROO PROVES ME WRONG: Toronto Argonaut head coach Ryan Dinwiddie deserves credit where credit is due. In what was originally perceived by some of us as favoritism toward a player he coached in Calgary, Dinwiddie boldly benched his veteran quarterback (McLeod Bethel-Thompson) in favor of a new unproven commodity in Nick Arbuckle. The new starter was magnificent in setting a tone early on engineering scoring drives, completing more than 70% of his passes and not making any big mistakes in his first Argo start. It was a gutsy move by a rookie head coach against the defending champs after he pulled it off. Take a bow, Ryan Dinwiddie. You knew what you had in this guy, even when the rest of us didn’t.   

8. BC LIONS NEW OWNER: Don’t know much about him other than the snippets I’ve been finding online. It appears as though his wealth is somewhere near a billion dollars. That’s enough to make at least a handful of NFL owners jealous. This means three things:  

1. A) The CFL has great, filthy rich ownership in all three of its problem-child markets of Toronto, Montreal and now-Vancouver. 
2. B) The CFL’s is not in any danger of folding in any way, shape or form. 
3. C) Take a bow, Randy Ambrosie. You’ve solved just about all of the league’s problems in a very short window around maybe the biggest crisis the CFL will ever face.

9. CFL’S BIGGEST PROBLEM, NOW: Aside from making those franchises in the big three viable, I’m looking at the Calgary Stampeders, now. They don’t draw particularly well and never have, really. They’re about the only team still in need of an upgrade to their facility. They reside in a city with lots of money, lots of entrepreneurs and lots of CFL fans. But what their city is lacking is Stampeder fans and enthusiasm in the wake of a beat-up oil industry. Nobody can say the Stampeders need to show Calgarians a winner. They’ve already been doing that for the past 30-some years with very little interruption.   

10. MILESTONE HOSPITALITY: We’ll close with a great story from Rod’s hometown of Milestone, Saskatchewan. My buddy pal, Russ, and I get all liquored up at a fundraiser and bid on everything up for auction. I end up forking over a pile of cash for these Rider tickets in the AGT Lounge for a game during the 2020 season. All good. Until, that is, COVID happened. I scrambled to find out who organized the event and what would happen to my tickets. I tracked down a guy out there named Ian Worms who assured me I wouldn’t be left hanging. And I wasn’t. Last week, they booked my tickets for the final home game of the 2021 season. Somehow, I feel like if this had happened anywhere outside of small-town Saskatchewan, there’s a better than 50-50 chance my tickets would’ve been wiped out by the pandemic and absolutely nobody would’ve cared.

(Follow Brendan on Twitter at @brendanhowardmc)