The Saskatchewan Roughriders walked away with a season-opening win over the B.C. Lions, but according to TSN analyst Glen Suitor, one of the game’s biggest turning points wasn’t a spectacular play; it was a misunderstanding of one of the CFL’s newest rules.
Speaking on the SportsCage, Suitor pointed to a late-game sequence involving a missed Saskatchewan field goal and said B.C.’s handling of the play may have altered the outcome. The moment came as Saskatchewan protected a three-point lead and attempted a field goal that would have stretched the advantage to six. The kick missed, but instead of allowing the ball to bounce through the end zone under the CFL’s updated rouge rules, Lions returner Stanley Berryhill III fielded it and conceded the single point.
Under the CFL’s revised kicking rules, a missed field goal that hits the turf and exits the end zone no longer automatically produces a rouge. Instead, the receiving team gets possession at its own 40-yard line without surrendering a point. However, if the returner catches the ball and fails to advance it out of the end zone, such as by taking a knee or conceding, the kicking team is still awarded the single. Suitor explained that the distinction completely changed the end-game math.
“If he catches it and does not get out of the end zone, it’s a single point,” Suitor said. “They still get the ball out there, but they’ve given up a point.”
That one point changed the scoreboard from a three-point game into a four-point game. According to Suitor, that forced the Lions to need a touchdown on their final possession rather than drive for a field goal to tie and send the game to overtime.
“They absolutely had to let that ball hit the turf,” Suitor said.
Suitor stopped short of criticizing the player directly, noting Hill had entered the return role after Seven McGee exited early with injury.
“I’ll give him the break that he was not expecting to be a returner in the game,” Suitor said. “So, therefore, probably didn’t know the nuance of the new rule.”
Suitor also noted there are practical reasons players instinctively attack the football in those situations. Because the ball remains live, the kicking team can still recover a missed field goal in the end zone if no returner plays it.
“The kicker or the holder, whoever’s behind the kick, can go and recover it,” Suitor explained.
But Suitor believes moments like this are exactly why teams will spend extra time educating players on the new kicking rules.
“There are nuances in this new rule change with the rouge that teams and players are going to have to really go over,” Suitor said.
The change extends beyond missed field goals. Suitor pointed out that kickoffs now entail similar strategic decisions because kicking the ball through the end zone no longer automatically results in a point; instead, it gives the receiving team strong field position at the 40-yard line.
For Suitor, the play served as an early reminder that understanding the CFL’s updated rulebook may become just as important as execution.
“There’s going to be nuance here that I think teams, for a while, are going to kick around a little bit,” Suitor said.
And in Week 1, Saskatchewan may have been the first team to benefit from it.
