The Green Zone: Riders’ Jeremy O’Day preparing for 2025

It’s a busy time for Saskatchewan Roughriders general manager Jeremy O’Day.

He is busy evaluating the roster and helping make decisions with the coaching staff about how the 2025 Riders team will be built.

One of the big decisions that has been made is Trevor Harris will return as the team’s starter next season.

O’Day joined Jamie Nye and Locker on The Green Zone to discuss the veteran quarterback and what improvements need to be made to get Saskatchewan back to the Grey Cup.

Listen to the full interview of Jeremy O’Day on The Green Zone:

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Jamie and Locker: When did you and head coach Corey Mace sit down and go, ‘We need Trevor Harris back as our number one quarterback’?

O’Day: It’s more than just me and Corey Mace. So we sit down with our personnel department, Corey, coach Mueller and that’s when we have full discussions on guys that are free agents. That’s obviously a big question of who we want to be our quarterback. We did that shortly after the season was over and after we kind of went through the evaluations from the positional coaches and the staff. Once you do all that, you kind of make your decision. There’s a lot of discussion with that, but kind of unanimous across the board, we wanted Trevor to be back and just feel he just brings great value to our team and our organization and is the type of player that you want being the face of your franchise.

Yesterday, we had Trevor on and he spoke very highly of Jack Coan and where he’s at as far as development, his work ethic and went into great detail about how much he likes him. Do you believe that Jack is ready to take that next step and become that second piece in the quarterback room?

O’Day: I certainly thought he took a lot of steps during the season, and a lot of it is just getting used to the nuances in our league – there’s a lot of motions and extra player on the field. So it is a change for guys when they first come up. As far as what Jack does, Jack’s someone that prepares at a high level. He’s very similar to Trevor, and how he processes and thinks through the game. Trevor speaks very highly of him but we signed him for a reason and thought he was a good player. We think he’s a good player still. He’s high in the minds of our offensive coordinator as well.

He just didn’t get a lot of opportunity this year just coming into our league and learning our system, learning our league. When you’re number three (on the depth chart), you don’t get a ton of reps in practice. Mainly what we see him at is really throwing scout team against our defense, and Corey was aggravated many times this year with the amount of balls that he completed against our defense. He’s got a lot of characteristics and came out of a big program (Notre Dame) and played in big games and has the size and arm strength you look for. It’s just a matter of if he’s going to take the next step or not and so that’s kind of yet to be determined. But definitely feel like he’s going to have an opportunity to grow a little bit in his position. We’re excited to see him with a little bit more opportunity, but also having that year under your belt.

What is your philosophy on trying to find the next franchise quarterback?

O’Day: I’m sure Trevor’s the first to tell you that he’s getting older and we’re all very aware of it. We felt like the right decision was to bring Trevor back. But we are very conscious of knowing that we have to find someone that’s going to be able to lead our franchise into the future and is going to be successful. So it’s very important to us. We’ve tried to develop some quarterbacks in the past. The best situation is you have a quarterback that you develop within your system that becomes that next guy. So we’re very leery of it.

We understand that it needs to happen and Trevor has just been really great with also understanding that. Trevor’s got a lot of football left in him, but we’re all kind of aware that sooner or later, we’re going to have to move forward with someone that’s going to take the reins. So we do a lot of work on watching quarterbacks and putting quarterbacks on our negotiation list. Some of those quarterbacks may not even be in our league yet but it is something that is on our mind knowing the importance of that number two (spot).

I’ve been around a lot of seasons where you lose your number one and the season doesn’t go as planned so ideally you want to have that next guy ready to go.

Do you want someone at number two next year who has started games in the CFL?

O’Day: If you’re in an ideal situation, if you look across the league, it’s not always that situation. In some cases, you do have to sometimes take a risk with a player who maybe doesn’t have that starting experience. It is part of our evaluation – do you want a guy that’s had some experience that you think can grow a little bit, or if he’s started games with other teams?

You kind of look at all those things when you’re evaluating that number two position. The best case is where you have two great quarterbacks who have played in our league, but sometimes you don’t know who that next great quarterback is if you don’t give that person an opportunity. I’m not trying to avoid the question by any means, but I am saying there is a lot of thought process that goes into that backup spot.

Is this one of the less stressful offseasons in recent years?

O’Day: Well it is less stressful because you’re coming off of a better year and you feel like there’s some momentum going into the next season. Last offseason was our second tough year in a row and we went through a coaching change. There’s a lot that goes into that, not only just hiring the head man, but also hiring his staff and then them being able to implement a new defense, a new offense in just a short period of training camp. So you feel a little bit more secure in what you’re going into the season just because your players know what to expect. Free agency is right around the corner. It’s only a couple months away.

So you’re working on getting your players back that you want to bring back. You can focus a little bit more on other things than worrying about the coaching staff but I always say that this is kind of our season in the football ops and the personnel department. This is where we really set the structure and the foundation of the team. You’re signing your free agents back, but you’re also working on your negotiation list and signing new players that have never been here. It’s a really important time for us in football operations.

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What areas did you identify on the field you need to improve?

O’Day: What really good teams do is they don’t go through lulls. We’ve had that for the last number of seasons. We had a lull where it was five or six games where we didn’t get a win – we had a tie in there, but they were all super close games. So finding a way to win those close games when you’re going through that stretch. Who would have known at the time that if you win one more of those games, you’re looking at a home playoff with the first-round bye. I always say that good teams don’t lose multiple games in a row. You can certainly turn it around at the end of the season but if you want to have success, ultimately, you want to have that first-round bye and play at home. Those are things that we’re striving to do. Home playoff games are super important, but especially that first-round bye.

So being a team that can bounce back after losses in the season. Can you bounce back and not let those kind of snowball into more losses? So how do you do that? I thought we were really good at creating turnovers and not turning the ball over. If you look at our turnover ratio for the year, we should have had a better record than what we had.

Offensively, just having some continuity. We had a lot of juggling going on with injuries. If we can get more consistent and try to stay healthier, I know that’s easier said than done, but if we can keep more continuity on offence, I think that would pay dividends. I thought it was an excellent job by our offensive coaching staff coming in and kind of rolling through offensive lineman there almost every week. That’s a challenge.