As far as preseason games go, that one wasn’t the worst.
The Riders opened their preseason on Saturday afternoon at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg and the game itself cleared the extremely low bar for entertainment value, despite the fact that the two teams didn’t even score 30 points combined.
That said, it was still a preseason game. It wasn’t a masterpiece that will be remembered for years to come and the outcome remained completely meaningless.
We’ve still got one more of these to sit through before we get to the real thing on June 5.
Here’s the good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ preseason loss in Winnipeg.
The Good
If there’s one area the Riders need to improve in 2025, it would be their return game.
Even though veteran returner Mario Alford finished in the top three in both kickoff and punt return yards in 2024, he didn’t have the same explosiveness we’d seen in previous seasons.
More often than not, Alford seemed to run for the sidelines rather than up the field. Whether that was a choice or how he was coached is unclear. Alford often ensured the Riders’ possession of the ball but not much more than that as the season went along.
Receiver Drae McCray brought a different approach to the position, including an explosive 51-yard kickoff return in the first half. I’d love to be able to tell you exactly how many yards McCray ran for, but the CFL’s stats at the time of writing didn’t include any Rider kick returns. Unofficially, my math has him at a combined 152 yards on kick returns but I wouldn’t trust that.
Either way, a change at returner could be on the horizon in Riderville.
The Bad
This game was incredibly difficult to watch and not because it was a preseason game.
The Blue Bombers’ in-house feed simply did not translate into a broadcast for consumption outside of the stadium.
The angles for all of the live plays were from weird spots and were zoomed in far too much. If you wanted a good view of any of the quarterbacks moving around in the pocket, you got it. Anything else? Forget it. Even the replays after the fact often didn’t offer up much in the way of evidence as to what happened on a given play.
Every field goal attempt by Blue Bombers kicker Sergio Castillo brought a team logo to the scoreboard without any sight of the kick whatsoever. The best angle of anything we saw all game was when Winnipeg head coach Mike O’Shea challenged for pass interference in the first half.
I appreciate the CFL (and TSN) making these games available for free on the league’s website, but the teams have to do better. I don’t expect anyone to spend any extra money but the fact that people outside of the stadium are watching this feed should be taken into consideration. A still cam at mid-field that showed the entire field would have been more useful than what we saw on Saturday afternoon.
The Dumb
For much of the game, a play in the first half was in the pole position for this section but in the end, it was a man in the crowd that stole the show.
In the first quarter, quarterback Trevor Harris had a pass clearly knocked down, but Blue Bombers defensive lineman James Vaughters picked it up and took it all the way to the house. The ball had clearly hit the turf long before Vaughters picked it up, but the official who was watching the play right in front of him didn’t blow the play dead for some reason. I suppose it’s preseason for the officials as well.
Riders kicker Brian Garrity also had one of the worst field goal attempts we’ve ever seen in a professional football game, line-driving one low and to the left.
However, in the third quarter, the feed cut to a man in the crowd with a shirt I did not expect to see. This shirt caught the eye of a few of us at 3DownNation.
How popular is Mike O’Shea in Winnipeg?
This popular.
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— John Hodge (@johnhodge.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 4:04 PM
I have many questions and I don’t know if we’ll ever get any answers.
The post The good, the bad, and the dumb of the Riders’ 15-9 preseason loss to Winnipeg appeared first on 3DownNation.
