Riders’ Reynolds saw challenging 2022, but believes in a bounce back in 2023

While the Saskatchewan Roughriders fell short of their lofty expectations in 2022, president and CEO Craig Reynolds believes the future can be bright for the CFL team.

“On the field, we had a challenging football year. (But) I think the way the season ended with hosting the Grey Cup — and what an incredible event that was — I’ll reflect back years from now and that’s what I’ll remember about 2022,” Reynolds said. “I’ll remember the outstanding Grey Cup Festival we hosted and how incredible that festival was.”

For many fans of the CFL franchise, 2022 will be a year they will want to forget. The Riders came into the season with high expectations after appearing in back-to-back West Division finals to go along with the fact the 109th Grey Cup was being played at Mosaic Stadium.

“I think it’s accurate to say there’s pressure every single year. But it’s also accurate to say there’s additional pressure when you’re hosting the Grey Cup,” Reynolds said.

“I think in terms of our goal — it’s always to play in in the Grey Cup — but in terms of pressure, there absolutely is a lot of pressure when you’re hosting the Grey Cup, especially after the last time you hosted it (in 2013), you were in it and won it.

“Everybody wants to recreate that. The fans want to recreate that and, as an organization, we certainly wanted to recreate that. We felt really good going into the season given how the last two seasons had gone.”

But Reynolds had to watch as the season unfolded and the Riders finished 6-12, missing the playoffs and losing their final seven games of the year.

“You’re obviously concerned. You’re concerned that the season is not going the way (we expected) and I kept reflecting on the number of things from an adversity standpoint that we kept having to deal with,” Reynolds said.

One of the things the team had to deal with was the situation revolving around Riders defensive tackle Garrett Marino.

Marino was suspended four games – the most handed out by the CFL due to on-field behaviour – following a low hit that injured Ottawa Redblacks quarterback Jeremiah Masoli on July 8. A part of that suspension was one game due to what the CFL called “comments about the heritage” of Masoli.

While Reynolds eventually spoke about the issue on July 21, he admits he should’ve addressed it earlier.

“Obviously we were embarrassed as an organization around Garrett’s behaviour. Whenever you have a tough situation like that, it’s hard because now we have the benefit of hindsight. At the time, you try to make the best decisions you possibly can for the team and the organization and the brand,” Reynolds said.

“Personally as I reflect back, I wish I would have been out there a little bit more. I think we learned some things from that situation.”

Marino was released by the team on Sept. 6.

The Roughriders also had to deal with a COVID outbreak that forced the postponement of their July 23 game by a day along with a number of injuries and suspensions throughout the season.

“Obviously, you’re concerned, but you also have hope, right? You want to be optimistic and you want to believe that we’re going to start to string together some wins and get hot towards the end of the season and make a run,” Reynolds said. “The reality was it just never happened. Things started to spiral and we just could never get it back.”

Off the field, the team had to deal with its own adversity as well as it continues to try and bounce back from the cancelled 2020 season.

“We are still in a bit of COVID recovery mode,” Reynolds said. “As an organization, we had made a number of changes that we had to do to survive the pandemic and we had a reduced workforce, and we were hosting a Grey Cup. So we probably had less people as a whole than we needed to and we were also hosting the CFL signature event.

“Obviously we wanted it to be the biggest and best Grey Cup Festival that’s ever been hosted.”

Reynolds believes the organization was able to deliver when it came to the CFL’s premier event.

“It was just such an outstanding event,” he said. “I continue to hear day in and day out conversation around the hospitality that was shown by our volunteers … It was the longest-planned Grey Cup ever, with the loss of the lost season.”

Now as the team turns its attention to 2023, Reynolds has elected to stay the course when it comes to on the field.

He admitted he and the board needed to have conversations about where the team would be heading into the new year.

“That’s just good business practice; you’re going to have those conversations every single year. Even after a good positive year, you’re going to have those types of conversations with the board about how do we get better? How do we improve things? How do we get to take that next step?” Reynolds said.

Reynolds elected to keep head coach Craig Dickenson and general manager Jeremy O’Day for the final year of their contracts – but didn’t extend them beyond the next season.

“Both Craig and Jeremy have had tremendous success here and we and we can’t lose sight of that. Prior to last year, we were in back-to-back West finals,” Reynolds said. “This season started off strongly and then a number of factors hit us and we dealt with a fair amount of adversity in the season and it just sort of spiralled.

“We believe in them and we believe that they’re the best position to understand where we need to get better and improvements need to be made to get us back into playing winning football.”

But Reynolds believes the future is promising for the Riders.

Off the field, the team will be looking to connect with fans about how it can improve as an organization. It is doing this by holding focus groups to better understand how fans are feeling about the team.

“We’re just really having those conversations around how do we get better as an organization? How do we make sure that we’re doing the things that make them want to come to come to stadium, want to buy merchandise and want to be part of the organization?” Reynolds said.

“There’s a lot of things that (fans) are really proud of the organization — the work we do in the community, the game-day experience. So how do we just take the next step with those things and continue to do more of those things?”

Reynolds expects a bounce-back year on the field for the club that will look to return to the playoffs and vie for the 110th Grey Cup in Hamilton.

“For us, it’s about doing the things in the off-season to make the improvements to our football team so that we are building a team that Rider Nation is proud of and that Rider Nation can believe in,” Reynolds said. “If we do that and we do the right things, we have great people involved in this organization.

“We believe we’re going to put together a great coaching staff full of high-character individuals that work hard every day to get back to where we’ve been and winning more football games than we saw in 2022.”