The Saskatchewan Roughriders received bad news on the injury front Thursday as four of its players are sidelined with a torn Achilles tendon following a scheduled workout at Mosaic Stadium.
Defensive end Freddie Bishop, middle linebacker Larry Dean, defensive back Nelson Lokombo and running back Jonathan Femi-Cole are expected to be out long-term, according to Jeremy O’Day, Roughriders general manager.
These injuries happened just two days before the start of training camp, which begins Saturday.
“We feel terrible about this. Our players worked very hard to get back to playing football,” O’Day said.
“They’ve been very excited to be back in the stadium, they’ve had a lot of energy when they’ve been over here and our heart goes out to those players that were injured.”
Bishop and Dean were expected to be starters this season. Lokombo was the team’s first pick in the 2021 Canadian Football League draft and second overall.
“I can say that in all my years of playing football and being around the game, I’ve never seen anything quite like this where we had four injuries like that in the same period of time,” O’Day said.
“Usually you see one or two in a year, maybe, but the fact that we saw so many in a short period of time is something I’ve never seen before.”
O’Day believes it may have something to do with the long layoff from a cancelled 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic, but said management is focused on easing players back into game shape.
“Our goal as a team was … the opposite of what happened here. We wanted to slowly ramp up the players and even into training camp you’ll see that the practices are toned back,” O’Day said.
O’Day said he wasn’t prepared for something like this to happen, but is now looking at different options to fill those lost roles.
“I have to regroup, look at the roster and then determine whether there are players that we could bring in or whether we have players we think can take the opportunity that was opened by these injuries,” O’Day said.
“Fortunately, we’re at the start of training camp where we have a fair bit of players that are already here.”
The Roughriders kick off their season at home against the B.C Lions on Aug. 6.
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