‘They should have booed us:’ Riders fall 23-17 to Alouettes

Naaman Roosevelt said he didn’t notice that the Roughrider fans booed them at the end of the first half of the game, but agreed it was deserved.

“They should have booed us – especially on the offence. It was terrible what we were doing,” he said in the locker room after the game.

Terrible was a good way to describe the 23-17 loss.

Head coach Chris Jones put it this way.

“Too many penalties, too many turnovers and too many explosions.”

First the explosions. There were a few of them and most of them while Duron Carter was covering Chris Williams.

The Montreal receiver lit it up on Carter’s watch coming up with three passes for 130 yards and one touchdown.

It had many wondering if the Carter at cornerback experiment was over.

It’s not.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do (with Carter), we’ve got some technique work to do,” Jones said before turning the questions about Carter back to reporters.

“If (Eskimos defensive back) Aaron Grymes gets beat deep you all aren’t in here asking questions about Aaron Grymes because he’s a proven DB,” Jones said. “What we’ve got to do is work with a very good athlete, make him a better player.”

And for what it’s worth, Carter didn’t think he played that poorly.

“It wasn’t a tough night for me, “ Carter said. “I let up a touchdown. I let up two catches. It was a tough night for the team. We’re really this close and we always have some type of self (inflicted) mistake that brings us back.”

Which brings us to penalties – the Riders took 12 of them that cost them 120 yards.

And to turnovers – the quarterbacks threw four of them.

Amped up all week for his first start this season, Brandon Bridge completed just 44 percent of his passes and threw two interceptions. He was pulled at halftime.

“I was kind of surprised, to be honest, I thought they were going to let me go out there and try to get out of it,” Bridge said.

But Jones said the Canadian quarterback just wasn’t seeing it and that’s why he opted to put David Watford in.

“We’ll look at the film and see what his issues are and try to bring Brandon along,” Jones said. “Again, he’s been in a lot of games and we’ve won a lot of games with him. It’s not like he’s a bad quarterback it just wasn’t his night.”

Watford fared a little better than Bridge, still throwing two interceptions of his own, but also managing to score the Riders only touchdown of the game: a five-yard pass to Naaman Roosevelt.

Jones declined to say who the Roughriders starting quarterback would be next week, but whoever they are they have a tall order against a Hamilton Tiger-Cats offence who has put up more than 300 yards passing in their first three games of the season.

The Roughriders will take Sunday off before returning to the practice field on Monday morning.

QUICK HITS

• Despite the struggles of the offence, the Roughriders defensive line came back swinging after being stymied by the Ottawa Redblacks in week two. Willie Jefferson picked up two sacks, a forced fumble and fumble recovery. Charleston Hughes also upped his sack total to four after bringing down back up quarterback Jeff Mathews in the fourth quarter.
• Sam Hurl led the team in defensive tackles, while Shaq Evans led the receiving corps with 77 yards passing. Roosevelt hauled in the Roughriders only touchdown.
• Drew Willy came out of the game after a hard hit from Hughes. He came back out later and stood on the sidelines in street clothes.
• Naaman Roosevelt sported some special cleats in honour of the Riders Humboldt Strong tribute game. The green and yellow shoes had the words Humboldt Strong written in gold on one and the Broncos logo on the other (the strong had fallen off by the time the picture was taken).

Roughrider receiver Naaman Roosevelt wore special cleats in support of the Humboldt Broncos on June 30, 2018. (Arielle Zerr/980 CJME)