The Saskatchewan Roughriders were anything but thankful during Monday’s 44-24 loss at the hands of the Montreal Alouettes. But they were giving out plenty of helpings of touchdowns allowed through the air, Montreal quarterback Davis Alexander had five of them, and accounted for over 400 passing yards. The defensive struggles for the Green and White have become an alarming trend during the team’s current four-game losing skid. Players like defensive back Tevaughn Campbell grow more and more frustrated as the losses continue to pile up. “It’s just like coming to an interview and you guys ask what are we going to do? We tell you, you got to cut all the mistakes, you got to be detailed. We go to the game and it’s the same things that are happening. We come back, we tell you guys the same things, like over and over and over,” he said. The frustration of talk not leading to action extends throughout the locker room. Head Coach Corey Mace says the buck stops with him. Mace told CTV News the coaching staff as a whole need to put players in better positions to succeed during games. “Good, bad or indifferent, as coaches we’re always looking at where can we be better. I think our process is the same as the players, which would probably allude to why everyone is pissed off knowing that we keep talking about the same things,” said Mace. “At the end of the day it’s on me as the coach if we’re not retaining it, how can we go about teaching it differently so the players can retain and apply.” But players in the secondary like Nelson Lokombo and Campbell, are not placing any blame on the schemes. Instead, Campbell said the onus is on the players to translate talking about fixing mistakes, into action on gameday. “Like we get in the game, and we just completely lose our minds. It is frustrating and it’s definitely something that’s not going to get corrected overnight. So, we just got to keep working, keep going forward.” It’s a short week for the Roughriders, with a rematch against the Alouettes slated for Saturday at Mosaic Stadium.
