Saskatchewan Roughriders' defensive lineman Mike Rose will face his former team, the Calgary Stampeders, on Friday.
"I want to prove [Jeremy O'Day] and the Saskatchewan Roughriders right," Rose said." I'm here to bring a championship to Regina."
The 32-year-old Rose played his first seven CFL seasons with the Stamps starting in 2017. General manager and head coach Dave Dickenson released him in January, prior to an offseason roster bonus according to 3DownNation, which led to him being signed with the Riders.
The Green and White return from a bye week as the CFL's only undefeated team with a perfect record to start the 2025 season.
"It was good, I got to spend time with family and relax," Rose said. "I've never been 4-0 in the CFL, so I enjoyed it."
After Week 5 in the CFL, the Riders are tied for third place in the league with 10 sacks, Toronto has 14 and Montreal 13 but both teams have played one more game than Saskatchewan.
"We can win in multiple ways. We've got a lot of good defensive linemen. We've got some good practice squad guys that nobody knows about," Rose said. "We've got a lot of good d-line and a lot of depth."
The six-foot-one, 258 defensive linemen has suited up in four games for the Green and White in 2025, recording four defensive tackles and one sack. He enjoys playing alongside fellow veteran Micah Johnson.
"That's a Hall of Famer," Rose said. "It's easy to pick up stuff out of his game and use it in my own game."
Head coach Corey Mace appreciates the efforts Rose and Johnson, plus his other defensive linemen, provide.
"They're doing a lot of really good things. I know everybody's always going to point and look at one statistic — we're so much more than that," Mace said. "We preach disruption, those are two disruptive guys in the middle and those are just two of them. We've got other guys as well that are doing the same thing. We feel very confident in our defensive line room."
Both Mace and Rose have a history with the Stampeders as Mace was Rose's defensive line coach in Calgary when the Stamps won a Grey Cup in 2018. Mace stayed with Rose through 2021 until he accepted a job to be the Toronto Argonauts defensive coordinator from 2022 to 2023.
"To be honest, nothing outside of Mike Rose, he's just a fun-loving guy. He's going to always try to find ways to have a successful game," Mace explained. "For him, intrinsically, speaking to the offensive line over there, he knows those guys pretty dang good and can provide some information to the defensive line room as far as some of their strengths and weaknesses. We haven't talked about it, he ain't talked about it — he's just ready to go play a game."
The Riders clash with the Stampeders at home on Friday. Catch the pre-game show with Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk and Wes Cates at 4 p.m. Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder have the game call at 7 p.m. You can hear everything on the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network.
