You can never accuse the Saskatchewan Roughriders of playing boring football. For better or worse, they always seem to keep things interesting.
This time, they nearly blew a 31-14 lead at the end of the third quarter before hanging on for a 31-26 win over the Ottawa Redblacks to open the 2025 CFL season in front of 25,973 fans at Mosaic Stadium.
Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ first win of the season.
The Good
The running back position is one that Rider fans have been focused on since the start of last season after prized free-agent signing A.J. Ouellette joined the club from the Toronto Argonauts.
The Ohio native’s season didn’t go as planned last year and this new one isn’t off to a much better start, as he left the game early with an apparent head injury. There might be a pretty significant silver lining though and that’s the play of Canadian backup Thomas Bertrand-Hudon.
While I will never wish for anyone to get injured, it’s possible that the Riders could find themselves in a better position at tailback with the former Delaware State Hornet, who continues to impress when given a chance to carry the load in the backfield.
Even though Bertrand-Hudon finished the night with only 57 yards rushing, he found the end zone twice, including a 17-yard pitch-and-catch from QB Trevor Harris.
If Ouellette is set to miss time again, then Bertrand-Hudon should be given the opportunity to be the team’s top running back. Yes, it’s important to bring someone else in regardless, as you don’t want to wear down your backs unnecessarily early in the season. But he should still be given the chance to be the featured guy.
The Bad
An old problem re-surfaced for the Green and White on Friday night: their inability to put teams away.
After scoring on five of their first eight drives, Saskatchewan was held off the board for the rest of the game. While this remains something to keep an eye on as the season progresses, it wasn’t the biggest problem for the Riders on Friday night.
The injury bug bit the home team hard. Perhaps we should have seen it coming when a fan holding the giant Canadian flag during the national anthem had to be carted off the field prior to the game.
While you always want to put as many wins in the bank as you can, coming out of things as unscathed as possible is perhaps more important at this stage of the season as you try and build toward peaking at the right time.
The Riders weren’t so lucky in their home opener as they lost a number of players to injury including receiver Kian Schaffer-Baker, defensive back Rolan Milligan Jr., the previously mentioned Ouellette, linebacker A.J. Allen — though he might be okay after taking a shoulder pat to the nether regions — and left tackle Payton Collins.
It’s unknown at this point how long any of these guys will be out, but it’s certainly not the start any team wants in this regard.
The Dumb
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that holders don’t matter. We saw two examples in this one of just how important they are.
In the first quarter, the timing was off from Riders’ holder Joe Couch forcing kicker Brett Lauther to pull up on what would have been a 44-yard field attempt. During the ensuing fire drill, Couch would eventually fumble the ball before Lauther picked it up and actually pulled off a pretty decent punt, all things considered. Unfortunately for Lauther, the punt sailed right out of bounds, so it was completely wiped out by a penalty.
Later in the fourth quarter, Redblacks holder Richie Leone had the ball slip through his hands on a point-after attempt by kicker Lewis Ward, which would have reduced the Riders’ lead to just three points heading into the game’s final minutes. Despite the ball being on the ground, Ward was able to kick it toward the goal line and at least ensure no Rider picked it up to score two points for themselves.
Holder is often a position we take for granted, as most who do it are extremely good at it. We saw a little kicking chaos from both teams thanks to a couple of blunders from both handlers of the ball.
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