Riders Load up on Bye Week, Threaten to Seize Ottawa on Friday Night!
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are clearly not marching to anyone else’s drum beat as they have loaded up their defense and offense heading into their Friday night game with the whiney Ottawa Redblacks.
The Riders headed into their bye week on a two game winning streak and then spent the time convincing NFL cuts like William Jefferson, a former Edmonton Eskimo defensive end who came back from the NFL to sign up with the Riders; then Jeff Fuller, former Calgary Stampeder wide receiver; then the biggest surprise so far – Henoc Muamba, a Canadian linebacker who has taken multiple NFL shots and is known as a ratio buster because he plays in a spot where you would normally expect to find an American.
So the Riders defense, which has continued to improve since bottoming out against Hamilton in a 53-7 loss is showing signs of what it could look like. Now with the Riders magic number at one, that being a combination of Rider losses and Edmonton wins equalling one, it may be more realistic to look at the Riders remaining games as a testing ground for what 2017 will look like.
However this doesn’t mean the Riders will not be spoilers.