‘We’re going to learn’: Riders’ Dickenson, O’Day being brought back for 2023

The Saskatchewan Roughriders made changes Tuesday, but the top of the organization will be given a chance to right the ship.

Offensive co-ordinator Jason Maas was fired after a 6-12-0 season in which the offence scored an average of just 19.8 points per game, the second-lowest average in the CFL. The Edmonton Elks averaged 19.2 points per game.

Offensive line coach Stephen Sorrells will not have his contract renewed. The Riders gave up 77 sacks this year, the most in team history.

Wide receivers coach Travis Moore also will not be brought back.

“This last season was a tough year. When you go through tough times, there’s a lot of lessons to be learned,” said head coach Craig Dickenson, who will be returning for 2023 — the final year of his contract. “We really felt like we had a good team coming out of camp, we felt like our roster was good and we felt like we had a group who could make a run at it.

“We’re going to learn. We’ve already done a deep dive into the season and we feel like there will be a lot of lessons this year moving forward.”

General manager Jeremy O’Day believes the responsibility of how the season went is ultimately his.

“It all falls on me. I’m the guy that hires the head coach and I’m the guy that signs the players. Ultimately it comes down to me and the responsibility is all on me,” said O’Day, who’s also the Roughriders’ vice-president of football operations.

“It is my responsibility to ensure we have a team that will compete to win every game and to be in a position at the end of the year to win a Grey Cup. It’s on me to get it right.”

Both men will be given another chance as Riders president and CEO Craig Reynolds believes Dickenson and O’Day are the right people for the job.

“I truly believe that (O’Day) is in the best position to make the corrections that are required to get us back on track,” Reynolds said. “He’s a very good general manager. When you look at all the qualities you look for in a general manager, he ticks all the boxes.

“We’ve had some recent success. There’s a number of things that went wrong this year and there’s lots of lessons learned and I think Jeremy has learned from that and I think he deserves an opportunity to correct (it).”

The offensive line will be a big focus for O’Day this off-season.

“I think this (year) was a prime example of how important an offensive line is and to play well up front. It certainly is a focus for us and an area we need to get better at. That’s going to be a priority for us — it’s up front,” the former Riders centre said.

“We need to be better. As far as who will be back or how we will change it, it’s really going to be an evaluation process. But there have to be changes up front because we just weren’t successful enough at what we did and who we had.

“We missed on a couple players that we had hoped would be better and that’s on me – to have better players in those positions to be successful.”

There are a couple of other positions O’Day will need to take a look at.

“We have a big question at quarterback. We will have to go through and look at all the options,” O’Day said. “We have a co-ordinator to hire as well that will have an input into that as well.”

Cody Fajardo, who started for much of the season, was benched for the final two regular-season games and replaced by Mason Fine. Fajardo has suggested he may look at free agency this off-season.

In a year where there were plenty of off-field distractions as well, O’Day felt like he needs to do a better job when it comes to addressing those.

“I hold responsibility in that. I probably need to be more aggressive and step into some of those situations,” O’Day said. “We communicate on all the things that happen and we spend a lot of time together on a regular basis.

“Part of the evaluation process with Coach Dickenson and I was talking about team discipline and penalties.”

But it will be a year for both to prove they’re the right men for the job, with both of them on expiring contracts.

“We will move into 2023 and Jeremy understands the expectations in 2023, as does Craig, and we will deal (with the contracts) when we need to deal with them,” Reynolds said.

The full interviews with Dickenson, O’Day and Reynolds can be heard here: