After a tough 0–5 start out of the gate, the Green and White continued their abysmal play to start the season with a 30–5 drubbing at the hands of the Edmonton Eskimos on July 30. 

Without any real option at the starting quarterback position and a defence that at times hasn’t been able to stop a nosebleed, the panic button has officially been pressed in RiderNation.

With starting pivot Darian Durant lost for the year and Kevin Glenn on the shelf for at least six weeks, it’s an all too familiar scene for Rider fans as the third string quarterback has been called into action. After limping across the finish line by winning just twice in last season’s final nine games, the Riders appear to be headed down the same dark and hellish path. The team’s last win came on Nov. 8, 2014 against the Eskimos, a lengthy span of 265 days without a victory.

The new starting quarterback  — Brett Smith, who was signed this offseason to replace the ineffective Tino Sunseri — mustered up a whopping 132 yards passing to go along with two interceptions. All this while only scoring a measly five points, a score hardly good enough to win a baseball game. That means in Smith’s five quarters of action, he has led the offence to just five points,  for an average of one point per quarter. You don’t have to be a genius to know that that kind of production isn’t going to win youa football game.

The offence has far too many weapons to ever be this ineffective. Between Jerome Messam, Anthony Allen, Weston Dressler, Ryan Smith, Chris Getzlaf and Nic Demski, just give one of them the ball and let them go to work. The job of the quarterback is to run the offence smoothly and distribute the ball to your playmakers, which is obviously something Brett Smith has struggled with in his limited action at the CFL level.

Realistically, what other options does coach Corey Chamblin have? After Smith, on the depth chart is the heavily scrutinized Sunseri — who was actually released at the beginning of the year, only to be resigned when Durant went down with injury. Behind Sunseri is Keith Price and Blake Sims, both of whom excelled at the National Collegiate Athletics Association level, but have a grand total of zero CFL experience. So it appears to be Smith’s team for the foreseeable future.

The rocky start can’t solely be blamed on the offence however, as the team has blown fourth quarter leads in the first five games of the season. Injuries have piled up on both sides of the ball, as many defensive starters are also being forced to miss time with various injuries. The returns of Shea Emry, Weldon Brown and Mark LeGree will all help bolster the seventh ranked defence in the league.

With the strength of the defence seemingly in their front four, an effective pass rush has been non-existent to start the campaign, after a year ago leading the league in sacks by a wide margin. The defence’s inability to create turnovers has also raised some concern, with just two turnovers forced in six games. To put that in comparison, the Riders committed three turnovers in their last game alone.

It’s been 36 years since the Roughriders started 0–6 and things better turn around soon before this season is a write-off by Labour Day. In the upcoming weeks, the Riders take on the 4–1 Toronto Argonauts, followed by the bye week, then the always-tough Calgary Stampeders and lastly the surprising Ottawa RedBlacks. All three of those games will be hard fought as the Riders look for any sort of spark to get them back into the win column.

Saskatchewan will face Toronto on Aug. 8 at 5 p.m. looking to record its first win of the season. The game will air on TSN as the Riders look to avoid their first 0–7 start since 1959.

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Image: Jeremy Britz/Graphics Editor