The BC Lions are tackling the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Saturday afternoon, a team they lost to last week and are hoping for revenge with a victory at BC Place.
“I didn’t think we would be one-and-five. By no means this is the hand we’ve dealt and we’ve dug ourselves in this hole and now we have to dig ourselves out,” said Lions head coach DeVone Claybrooks.
The Lions have been productive moving the ball down the field and they put up some impressive offensive numbers against the Riders last week, with 468 total yards.
Mike Reilly completed 31 of his 40 passes for 346 yards, but they still need to score touchdowns, not just field goals.
“We had multiple opportunities down there and we only got in the end zone twice, but we had three other opportunities that we left for field goals and that is generally a big difference in a football game," the quarterback told reporters Friday.
“I thought that we moved the ball well throughout the course of the game, we were efficient on first downs, which is what we want to do. But, we have to finish drives once we get close to the score zones.”
Claybrooks echoed Reilly’s comments.
“We've just got to continue to run our offence when we get down there and not get too fancy or cute just do what got us there," he said. "We understand that is how we are approaching it.”
The protection of Reilly has been an ongoing problem this year due to injuries to the offensive line, the team has been shifting personnel around to fill in the gaps.
“It’s always important to give the quarterback time,” said Claybrooks, “but we are also going to put him in situations where he can be successful and not put so much stress on the O-line.”
“It’s a challenge any time you have movement on your offensive line at any position but that has been our theme this year we’ve had some important guys go down," Reilly added.
The Lions are looking to take advantage of playing at home where they’ve yet to win a regular season game.
“It’s important to win regardless of where we are at right now. With the way the season has gone—done and five every game—that comes up it’s imperative that you get two points but certainly playing at home we’ve always want to try to establish home field advantage make the other team uncomfortable,” Reilly told CTV News on Friday.
“You want to protect home field and we haven’t really been able to do that this year so our mindset is to come in and give the fans a good showing and we understand that we are a struggling fan base as far as trying to get buts in the seats and those are things that are attributed to us not playing well,” said Claybrooks.
“We do want to give a good showing at home you always want to protect home that’s one of the benefits that you have of playing out here in the west you can take advantage and that’s what we plan to do.”
The game Saturday is early with the kick off at 4 p.m. at BC Place.