Saskatchewan Roughriders legend Darian Durant is not planning the 2025 Grey Cup championship parade yet and he's cautious about how the next stretch of games will turn out for the Green and White.
"You hope to rack up as many wins early in the season as possible. We all know that the real season starts after Labour Day and this team still has a long way to go. They're winning the games that they're supposed to win. They're being dominant in spots where I think there were a lot of question marks before the season started, but there's still a long way to go," Durant said on the SportsCage.
"You have Hamilton after the bye and we'll see how they do. They've won six in a row and it could be seven after this week. That's gonna be a tough game at home."
After Saskatchewan takes on the Tiger-Cats, the Riders travel to Calgary for a match-up with the Stampeders and then play the Winnipeg Blue Bombers twice.
"Calgary's the only team to beat the Riders this year and they won at Mosaic Stadium. Before you look at Winnipeg, I know everyone wants to measure the Rider team against Winnipeg, you still have to look at Calgary. Don't even let me get to Calgary first, you still have to worry about this red-hot Hamilton team coming in. Then you have to go to Calgary and we all know that Calgary is a tough place to play, even though Rider fans always dominate that stadium," Durant said.
"You have to go and deal with a good Calgary team with Vernon Adams Jr., back under centre and then you have Winnipeg back-to-back. This is gonna be a tough four-game stretch for the team. The bye week is coming at a good time. Try to get Samuel Emilus back if his injuries are not too major."
The Roughriders last game was against the Montreal Alouettes and the team won 34-6. Onlookers were curious to see how Saskatchewan's offence would match-up against the Alouettes defence, which is led by coordinator Noel Thorpe.
"If you look at Noel Thorpe historically, he doesn't like to play a lot of man-to-man. He likes to sit back and make you take the completions right in front of you and hopefully you make a mistake. Sometimes you can't do that with Trevor [Harris]. [He's] so good at taking the underneath throw, making sure that he gets his early completions, gets everyone involved and gets into an early rhythm, he did that. What that did was force Noel Thorpe in Montreal to come up and play man-to-man, when they did, you could see the corner routes were on point," Durant said.
"He was able to spot the blitz. He did a great job of looking off coverage and freezing linebackers. Trevor's balling right now and when I say ball that's with the capital B. He's doing everything right, he knows exactly where to go and he's doing a great job of manipulating the defence with his eyes. Whenever you're hitting and clicking like this, it doesn't matter what you do defensively, all you can do is hope that your offence can score, you can get into a shootout and hope that Trevor makes a mistake."
Harris finished the game completing 19-of-27 passes for 289 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions. The 39-year-old has completed 75 percent of his passe for 2,183 yards with 13 touchdowns and four interceptions in seven starts this season while compiling a 6-1 win-loss record.
After the Riders bye this week, Saskatchewan's next game will be against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Saturday, August 16 at home. You can catch the pre-game show with Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk and Wes Cates at 10 a.m. Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder have the game call at 1 p.m. You can hear everything on the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network.
