Jameer Thurman is nearing his boiling point. The Saskatchewan Roughriders veteran linebacker feels enough is enough.
“We’ve got four games left in the regular season,” Thurman told Voice of the Roughriders Dave Thomas on Monday. “The intensity should be at an all-time high. The sense of urgency should be at an all-time high. You’re playing for jobs. You’re also playing for your lives right now. We’ve got to find a way and figure it out.”
Thurman clearly hasn’t turned the page from his team’s defensive effort in last Friday’s 31-24 road loss to the B.C. Lions.
The defeat was the second straight for the Riders and their fourth in six games. Losing in Vancouver also dropped them to third place in the West Division because the Lions claimed the head-to-head tiebreaker.
Winning the division and earning a bye straight to the West final is now almost out of the question. Even a hosting a postseason game is tenuous.
“We’re still fighting for playoffs right now,” Thurman said. “I can tell you right now, I’m not going home early. That’s for sure.”
Chief among Thurman’s frustrations is the way the Lions scored two of their touchdowns.
The Riders allowed their opponents to twice move the ball 70 yards in two plays following Dawson Hodge field goals.
“I know in my career, I’ve never allowed that in a game before,” Thurman said. “That’s something that hurt us big time. That’s 14 points on the board, and they didn’t even have to work for it. We’ve got to look in the mirror and find a way (to stop that). We can’t allow that to happen ever again.
“It’s more on us than it is on them. Two-play drives – you can talk to a lot of different football players. There’s not a lot of two-play drives out there where teams are scoring at will. That’s on us.”
Living it in real time was irritating enough for Thurman, Saskatchewan’s leader with 77 defensive tackles. Having to re-live it in film review on Monday was like adding salt to the wound.
Thurman plans on holding himself and his defensive teammates accountable this week as they prepare for Friday’s home game against the Calgary Stampeders.
“It’s tough because we go over things all week. We’ve got to execute on game day,” the 31-year-old Chicago native said. “All it comes down to is execution on game day. We’ve got to find a way to make sure that we harp on that even more. It starts in practice. We’ve got to up our intensity in practice. We’ve got to find ways to get guys going so where that stuff doesn’t happen in a game.”
The Riders looked panicked when the Lions went to no-huddle offences. That contributed to a 375-yard, four-touchdown performance for B.C. quarterback Nathan Rourke.
“We’ve got to find a way to play against tempo,” Thurman said. “We talk about things. We know they were going to do that. We’ve just got to execute. Play the play. They didn’t do anything that we didn’t expect. It just comes down to execution.”
The Riders are running out of time to execute better.
Calgary is below them in the standings, but Saskatchewan then closes the season with a home-and-home against league-best Montreal before hosting No. 2 Edmonton.
“We can talk and talk,” Riders coach Corey Mace said. “The old adage is winning takes care of itself. We know every game is crucial for us and this point in the season. We’re attacking it with that (mindset).”
Thurman is taking it a step further. The tone in his voice was of someone who’s completely fed up.
He’s not going to accept defensive efforts like the one they put forth in Vancouver anymore.
“We’ve just got to do better,” Thurman said. “We’ve got to stress ourselves in practice, so game day is easy. That’s what I’m harping on with a lot of guys now. We’ve got to do more because what we’re doing right now is not good enough.”
