Riders' coach celebrates 50th birthday with 3rd win

The Saskatchewan Roughriders gave Chris Jones the best birthday present he could have wished for Saturday night. 

Another victory, the Riders second in a row to keep those ever-so-slim playoff hopes alive. The Riders boss can enjoy his Sunday as he tries to come to grips with the fact that he's now 50 years old. 

The Riders knocked off the visiting Hamilton Tiger-Cats 20-18 in front of the smallest Mosaic Stadium crowd in quite some time, though the wet and cool weather had a lot to do with that.

With Canada playing Russia in the World Cup semi-finals at the same time, to stay home and channel flip was probably a popular choice.

Chris Jones probably felt himself aging more than just a year during the course of Saturday's game.

There was quarterback Mitchell Gale's fumble on the Hamilton one-yard line in the second quarter, which went 109 yards the other way for a Ticat touchdown.

However, the play was overturned, Gale was ruled down, and with another opportunity, Darian Durant took the snap and scored the major pushing the Riders in front 17-10.

It was arguably Durant's best overall performance since the 2013 Grey Cup, even topping the overtime win he engineered a week ago.

But, what can go wrong usually does for this club in 2016.

After being tackled by former Rider John Chick in the third quarter, Durant's head bounced off the turf, and with concussion protocols being what they are today, and rightfully so, Durant wasn't good enough an actor to convince team doctors he was good to go. There was no argument from the coach either.

"The doctors have total say especially when it comes to concussion protocol, that's not something that you fool around with." said head coach Chris Jones. "I wouldn't want my son coached that way and that's the way we do business."

That left the Riders' fate in the hands of Mitchell Gale and give him credit, most would probably prefer to hide under the bench after nearly coughing up the ball at the one, but Gale would drive the offence in the final minute to set up Tyler Crapigna's game-winning field goal. Riders win 20-18.

"Each game has its own life, you got to play it out however circumstances dictate," said Gale after the game. "Most of the time in football you can't control what happens, you just got to be able to rebound when things don't go your way and when things do go your way you got to be able to capitalize."

Unfortunately for the Riders, they haven't done enough capitalizing this year. Now that they finally appear to have figured it out, the damage already done is so severe it's only a matter of time before the words 'mathematically eliminated' ring out.

With five games left, the Riders are six points back of the fourth place Eskimos which for at least this week is a cross-over playoff spot into the east.

"We've had the same guys playing five, six weeks now, anyone will tell you that in football [continuity] is a major difference maker." said safety Jeff Hecht who finally has a play on his personal highlight reel after body-slamming Brandon Banks in the second quarter.

Hecht is one of 87 players the Riders have utilized in some capacity this season, that's one player short of a record.

Nothing to be proud of, but with the way they have been playing of late, it looks like training camp is finally over, the roster is nearly set.

"We're as good as we want to be in a sense, when we don't hurt ourselves with stupid penalties we're dangerous and I think the rest of the league understands that too." said Rob Bagg, one of three Rider receivers near the 100-yard mark against the Tiger-Cats.

Durant said players are just now starting to get it.

"Sometimes you have put on a film the day after the game, show guys the mistakes, and the penalties, the hidden yardage that comes with those penalties, what that does in the long run and I think once coach broke that down for us and we saw how we were killing ourselves, we made up our minds that if a team is going to beat us it's not going to be because of penalties but because they came out and just flat out beat us."

And Saturday night, the Riders took half as many penalties as the Ticats did and it translated into two points. A nice turnaround from the 57-3 beating they took in Hamilton a month ago.

"We're a good football team, again we're still getting healthy, getting guys back off of injury that haven't played in a long time, we've got some guys playing together that have played together for three, four, five weeks and so we just have to keep the room smiling, keep them happy, don't worry about anything other than ourselves." 

That was the message from Chris Jones to his players as they head into the bye week, a chance to head home for a few days before the final stretch of the season.

And Jones will spend his birthday where he's the happiest, in his office in a football stadium preparing for the next game.