The Saskatchewan Roughriders went into their Monday contest with Montreal Alouettes desperately needing a win to help in their quest to land a spot in the CFL playoffs.
Instead, they now find themselves in as nasty a late-season tailspin as a team can have, and their postseason hopes are in serious jeopardy.
Alouettes quarterback Davis Alexander threw for 403 yards and five passing touchdowns to lead his team to a 44-24 victory at a rocking Percival Molson Stadium.
As a result, Saskatchewan falls to 8-8 on the season with their fourth straight loss. They're now tied with Winnipeg and Calgary with eight wins, and only two of them will qualify for the playoffs. The Riders don't own the tiebreaker if they finish the season tied with either team.
“Not what we wanted to execute,” Riders coach Corey Mace said outside the locker room after the contest. “Again, close game for us at half, definitely a winnable game going into halftime. Then the second half just kind of fell apart. We couldn't convert as much as we'd like in the second half offensively, and then defensively just too many explosive plays.”
The final result was especially tough given that, as Mace mentioned, Saskatchewan was right in the thick of things early. They took a 10-7 lead out of the opening quarter and only trailed 17-13 at the half.
But Alexander’s ability to extend plays combined with a bizarre refusal by the Riders to regularly put him under pressure with the blitz led to a handful of deep ball touchdowns that quickly put things out of reach in the second half.
“Versus a team who we know does that,” Mace said. “We didn't have an answer for it today. We just got to go back to the drawing board, work our (butts) off and try to figure out this end of the season.”
Alexander found Charleston Rambo for 45- and 51-yard touchdowns — his only catches in the game — and Tyson Philpot for 46-yard major. Philpot also nearly had another monster touchdown, but the pass was just a bit too far for him to make the catch.
Deep balls, blown coverages and just about everything going wrong that could go wrong for Saskatchewan’s defensive secondary.
“Without watching the film, defensively, we just didn't play good enough,” said defensive back Marcus Sayles. “We talk about not giving up explosion plays. We talk about rallying into the ball. When you've got a quarterback like Davis Alexander, and they've got receivers and weapons, we've just got to be on our P's and Q's. Today, we just weren't on it.”
One positive on the afternoon came from quarterback Trevor Harris, who finished with 243 yards passing and a pair of touchdowns while also going over 5,000 yards passing on the season. Alexander also crossed that threshold in the contest.
The game also marked the return of kicker Brett Lauther, and he was as spot on as he has been all season in Ottawa, going 3-for-3 on field goals and accounting for the majority of Saskatchewan’s points until garbage time in the fourth quarter.
“It's always nice getting back out there, especially with the guys in green,” Lauther told Luc Mullinder after the game. “Obviously a tough one today — just more focused on winning and losing games — but it did feel good to get back out there.”
Kian Schaffer-Baker scored both Saskatchewan touchdowns, one in the first quarter and the other in the fourth.
Saskatchewan’s desperate playoff push doesn’t get any easier next week, as they’ll face the very same Alouettes, only this time at Mosaic Stadium on Saturday.
“We definitely got to know exactly what they're going to do,” Sayles said. “We play them next week, so there's not going to be too much change. We just got to figure out what we messed up on. We got to figure out what we can do better, and then just go from there. All we can do is work.”
