CALGARY — If ever there was a Canadian Football League game that was a tale of two halves, the contest between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Calgary Stampeders on Saturday night at McMahon Stadium was it.
The Roughriders turned in an utterly dominant first half, but a missed field goal return for a touchdown gave the Stampeders momentum when they returned to the field after the break. They’d make the most of it, scoring 14 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to tie the game 31-31 and send things to overtime.
Riders' quarterback Trevor Harris used their second possession to get down to Calgary’s one-yard line, and Tommy Stevens punched the ball in to secure a 40-37 victory. The win was the first in six tries against Calgary dating back to 2024 and sees Saskatchewan get off to a 2-0 start with two wildly close wins.
“We try to drag people to the deep end, people try to drag us to the deep end, we've calibrated enough to know we can swim,” Roughriders' head coach Corey Mace said of seeing his team prevail in another tight contest. “We can tread, we can swim as long as we need to if we lean on each other. It was excellent to see this. I think this is such a character win for us as a team this early in the season and let's hope this momentum builds as we go into next week.”
After a bit of a feeling out process that saw the Riders take a 3-0 lead in the first quarter, Saskatchewan exploded for 20 points in the second, with Stevens picking up his first of the game to go along with two majors from Kian Schaffer-Baker. Calgary got their first break midway through that quarter when Marquel Lee recovered a Harris fumble, leading to a goal line touchdown by Quincy Vaughn — and then came the biggest momentum swing of the game.
The Riders caught a stroke of luck when Kerfalla Exume recovered the kickoff after Schaffer-Baker’s second touchdown, but the ensuing field goal attempt on the final play of the half went wide left, leading to Calgary’s Tyreik McAllister bringing the return back 120 yards for the touchdown.
Just like that, what could have been a 26-7 halftime lead turned into a 23-14 advantage, and Calgary was right back in the game.
A touchdown to KeeSean Johnson and two-point convert in the third quarter gave Saskatchewan a 14-point lead, but the momentum switched completely in the fourth. Vaughn scored Calgary’s third major early in the quarter, and Stampeders' quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. completed the comeback with a masterful drive in the final two minutes and 44 seconds that ended with Tevin Jones catching the game-tying touchdown with 43 seconds remaining.
Roughriders' linebacker Josh Woods — who had seven tackles — felt that at that point, it was going to be a matter of whoever found the extra gear in overtime.
“It took everybody, all phases of the ball,” Woods said. “I think we kind of let up in the second half, we should have put it away earlier. [But after that] it was a next play mentality, not worrying about the last drive, the last play, but the next play. So I think we did that and we were able to finish.”
The two teams exchanged field goals on the first overtime series before Calgary settled for a field goal in the second. That gave Saskatchewan a chance to finish things off, with an 11-yard pass to Schaffer-Baker setting the Riders up at the one-yard line and giving Stevens his chance to win. Like his sneak earlier, Steven broke to the right before following his blockers over the line, and the victory was in the books.
“It’s something we’d never shown before, I actually had to go deep into the archives to find something that looked similar to that and couldn’t find anything,” Stevens said. “So it was more so going into it thinking we would get a good look and we got the look that we wanted.”
A.J. Ouellette had a solid game running the ball with 18 carries for 84 yards, but left in the third quarter with an apparent right leg injury. The defence also took another hit when defensive back Juju Hughes left in the fourth quarter after what looked like a left ankle injury.
Schaffer-Baker had another impressive game receiving, catching eight of the nine passes thrown his way for 130 yards, while Sam Emilus had four catches for 90 yards. Harris himself was once again stellar, completing 23-of-36 passes for 349 yards and three majors with no interceptions.
After a slow start for Calgary, running back Dedrick Mills had 15 carries for 103 yards, while Erik Brooks was the Stamps’ top receiver with six catches for 64 yards. Adams Jr. finished 20-for-30 passing for 254 yards and the one major.
In the end, the contest turned out pretty much as coach Mace expected — a hard-fought battle that went right down to the end.
“We talked about it all week that we're going to have to strain, we're probably going to be walking on that plane limping,” Mace said. “That was it, everybody had to stick together regardless of what the situation was. We did that, there were highs and lows throughout the game, but ultimately we stuck together to make sure that we came out on top.”
The Roughriders are back in action Friday when they host the Toronto Argonauts, with kickoff at 7 p.m. from Mosaic Stadium
