The Roughriders are winning, but earning no points for style

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are in, and they have a home playoff game to boot.

The team will host the Calgary Stampeders on Nov. 28 in the west semi-final. However, the squad is not playing well enough to go any further, the coach said at the conclusion of Saturday's 29-24 win over the Edmonton Elks.

It was Saskatchewan's fourth straight victory, a achievement you would think might have a head coach feeling encouraged. But Craig Dickenson was not exactly in a celebratory mood.

Dickenson clearly doesn't subscribe to the theory that as long as you win, it doesn't matter what it looks like.

He believes the victories are merely glossing over mental mistakes and poor execution, which will bite the team in the behind down the road.

Dickenson didn't go as far to say his team was dumb — which is how Bruce Arians described his Super Bowl Champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers after their loss Sunday to that football team from Washington — but he made it quite clear the Riders will have to raise their game to another level to avoid a third consecutive playoff loss at Mosaic Stadium.

The Riders are 0-2 in the postseason at the new stadium.

"We will have to play better if we expect to go anywhere in the playoffs, there's no question about that."

A punt return fumble and a wasted timeout highlighted Saturday's miscues.

"First time in my career I had to call a timeout at the start of the second half because I didn't have 12 guys, and I'm not happy with the team about that. It was an embarrassing moment for me as a coach."

It's safe to say Dickenson's players won't be late coming back onto the field any time soon.

Dickenson said his Riders are not an elite team, but feels they can play with anybody in the league. It's just a matter of clicking.

"The playoffs is about getting hot, about getting rolling at the right time. I'm hoping we can do that, but If we play the way we did [Saturday] I don't think we can beat Calgary or Winnipeg."

It's true, the Riders are not earning a lot of style points in their wins, but compared to what we are seeing across the league, they are at least watchable.

The CFL has not put on a good show this year and there are reasons why.

You can blame COVID-19 and a lost 2020 season, but you can just as easily point fingers at the league's front office.

The CFL slashed salary caps for each team's football operations department by nearly 25 percent prior to this season. Coaching staffs are smaller, players are affected, and Dickenson has noticed the difference.

"It is difficult to get the best coaches for what we can pay them now, but we have to make sure we have a profitable league as well. It does affect the ability to put together a quality staff, and it does affect the ability to retain quality people and develop them. It's hard to get a guy to take an entry level job for $35,000. For $50,000 you can get some guys who will think about it."

Maybe that is why the CFL's elite quarterbacks have looked outstandingly mediocre in 2021.

Bo Levi Mitchell and Michael Reilly are well off of their previous forms, and the Riders' Cody Fajardo is not as good as he was in 2019.

Dickenson said it goes back to the restrictions they now have on off-season mini-camps, taking away the development time between quarterback and receiver.

As a result, scoring is down.

The best team in the league, Winnipeg, is averaging 23 point per game. That is the lowest average for the highest scoring team in years and it's not even close.

For example, when the Riders won the Grey Cup in 2013, they averaged 28 points per game and were ranked third in that category.

There is nothing normal about today's world and the pandemic has hit the CFL especially hard.

There is optimism the Grey Cup in Hamilton will kick start the league back on the road to recovery. The Riders will visit there this Saturday for one last regular season game.

They will have nothing to play for, other than adding to the list of injuries.

The team will rest as many players as it can, because after this it gets real. Season-over type of real.