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Rider Insider, Sept. 14, 2015

Sep 14, 2015 | 9:28 AM

This season ended at the 14:23 mark of the second quarter of the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ Week 1 home game against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

That’s when, with 0:37 seconds left in the first half, star quarterback Darian Durant went down with what would later be learned was a season-ending rupture of his left Achilles tendon.

If I had to guess the time, it would have been roughly 7:37 pm MT.

Poof.

No matter that the Riders were trailing the Bombers 15-14 at the time.  If healthy, Durant would’ve led the Riders back to victory.  Of that, I have no doubt.  Over his 10 seasons here, Durant has just about always led the Roughriders to thrilling comeback victories.  Those were the days.

But Durant’s season was over at that point and in retrospect, so too was his entire team’s.

Fast forward to now and the Durant-less Roughriders are 1-10 and facing a considerable conundrum with seven games left in the regular season.
They’ve already gone through a massive upheaval in the form of the firings of head coach Corey Chamblin and GM Brendan Taman two Mondays ago and no one’s certain now what the future will bring.

The 2014 season went down the tubes in Week 10 last year when Durant was felled by a season-ending right arm injury but we were assured steps were taken in the off-season to ensure the team would be better prepared if the unthinkable were to happen again.

And then it did.  And the good ship Rider sunk again. Cue the firings.

It’s sad that the Riders’ margin for error was beyond razor thin for each game they’d face in the second half of this season but that’s the hand they were dealt.  Just one loss after Labour Day meant this team would be faced with Next Year Country and now that’s where they sit.  Saturday’s 22-7 loss to the Blue Bombers in Winnipeg’s Banjo Bowl was the chilling dagger.

However it’s not that the team isn’t worth following any longer.  The course ahead is a curious one as the new braintrust of GM Jeremy O’Day and head coach Bob Dyce – both interim replacements – need to sort out the desire to collect as many wins as possible versus auditioning talent for next year’s team.

2-16 looks better than 1-17, 3-15 looks better than 2-16, and so on and so on.  All the while management needs to keep an eye on the bursting salary cap and manage costs in every area.

“We talk about everything we do, we do for us,” Bob Dyce explained on 620 CKRM’s postgame show Saturday night.  “We stay together and stay strong for each other.  You never really know what’s going to happen in the future.  You have to take one play at a time, one day at a time, and get better with each opportunity.”

The trouble with that is what’s best for individual players may not be what’s best for the collective outlook of the franchise.  For instance, what’s best for quarterback Kevin Glenn is to play.  The 36-year old veteran is due to come off the 6-game Injured List this week after having recovered from a torn pectoral muscle.  However what’s best for rookie quarterback Brett Smith, who’s started the past six games, is to keep taking snaps.

And the unspoken elephant in the room is what’s going to happen with Durant once he heals from the Achilles rupture in time for the 2016 season?  No one will say it, but many wonder if Durant will be at peak form both physically and mentally when he returns.  He’s been dealt with two viciously devastating injuries and the toll on his psyche may be far greater than what his body’s been through.

I think at this point, most everyone can see the problems of this team run far deeper than the injury to Durant.  The Eskimos, Blue Bombers and Alouettes have all seen their starting pivots go down but they’ve managed to win games and remain in the post-season race.

Not so for the once mighty Roughriders.

And as far as the other players go, they’ll need to find some sort of motivation to play their best for the remaining games.  It’s a brand new, albeit distasteful, experience for each one of them.

“We’re gonna continue to fight and battle and if you want to be a part of the solution, you have to play well now,” observed veteran receiver Rob Bagg.  “We’ll play until we’re statistically out of it.  You might as well do it right if you’re going to do it.”

Unfortunately, it’s gotten to be too late.