At our broadcast team’s pre-game meeting with Dave Dickenson, he was blunt in his assessment. If the Calgary Stampeders don’t run the ball, he said, they don’t win the game against Saskatchewan.
They ran the ball. They won the game.
Dickenson figured – correctly – that the Riders would drop extra bodies into pass coverage to try and confound Bo Levi Mitchell. He put the ball, and the game, in the hands of Jerome Messam.
The running back was, no doubt, eager to please after a game-changing fumble and ejection in Montreal a week ago. Messam responded by running roughshod over the Saskatchewan defence to the tune of 135 yards and a touchdown.
The beleaguered defence got a huge boost from the return of Charleston Hughes. A fired up Hughes stabilized a line that had been patchwork at best because of injuries.
Hughes sent Kevin Glenn to the turf three times. His recovery, and the imminent return of Deron Mayo, Brandon Smith and possibly Junior Turner will take care of that side of the ball.
Almost lost in all of this was a 47-yard field goal for Rene Paredes. That, following on the heels of a five-for-five performance in Montreal, make his early season struggles a non-issue.
Perfect? Not yet. Improving? Certainly. Publicly, the Stampeders won’t admit this, but privately, if you could have told the team they’d come through the early season injury parade at 3-1-1, to a man they would have been just fine with that.