ROB VANSTONE: Anatomy of a game-winning, playoff-clinching drive

Five days after a Thanksgiving Day loss in Montreal, the Saskatchewan Roughriders had to digest some stuffing.

Just under three minutes remained in Saturday’s rematch with the Alouettes when a rare occurrence — Saskatchewan short-yardage specialist Tommy Stevens being stuffed on a third-and-one run — silenced the spectators at Mosaic Stadium.

Trailing 12-9, the defending Grey Cup champions had relinquished the football at midfield. An Alouettes touchdown would have all but guaranteed a victory for the visiting side before 28,611 onlookers.

But then the Roughriders began making one crucial play after another — culminating in a game-winning, 17-yard touchdown pass from Trevor Harris to KeeSean Johnson with 29 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

“We’ve talked as a team about having each other’s backs regardless of the situation,” Head Coach Corey Mace said after a 16-12 victory that clinched a CFL playoff berth for Saskatchewan.

“I think probably anybody across the country who follows CFL football was expecting Tommy to convert. Their defence made a heck of a play.

“Our defensive players were running on to the field, getting ready to have the offence’s back. Maybe in weeks prior, I felt like we were just missing that a little bit, so it was awesome to see.

"There was no finger-pointing. It was just, ‘Come on. Let’s get this done.’ ”

Montreal generated one first down before the Saskatchewan defence stiffened, restricting the Alouettes to back-to-back three-yard gains — thanks to tackles by Aubrey Miller Jr. and DaMarcus Fields — and forcing a field-goal attempt.

“Those are big moments,” safety Nelson Lokombo said. “When those opportunities come, we pride ourselves in being able to make those stops.”

Then came an outcome that rivalled Stevens being stopped on third down for sheer improbability.

Montreal’s Jose Maltos Diaz missed a field-goal attempt for only the third time in 43 tries this season. His 42-yard attempt, which went wide left, was retrieved by Mathew Sexton 10 yards deep in Mosaic Stadium’s south end zone.

The speedy Sexton averted a rouge — a point that would have prevented Saskatchewan from being able to tie the game with a field goal — and motored 46 yards on his 29^th birthday to give the Roughriders decent field position to begin what would be their final drive.

“We’ve been waiting for somebody to miss a field goal versus us this year,” Mace noted. “We finally got one and we got a good return.”

Until Maltos Diaz missed, Roughriders opponents were 45-for-46 on field-goal attempts this season. The only previous miss was by Toronto’s Brady Lidster on Aug. 29 at Mosaic Stadium. Lidster’s 32-yard attempt was blocked by Mike Rose.

Until Saturday, then, every opposing field-goal attempt on which the ball had advanced beyond the line of scrimmage had been successful.

Sexton made the most of the Roughriders’ first missed field goal return of the year.

“It’s a good way to get the drive going, but it really comes down to these guys on offence doing their thing,” he said. “It’s easy to go back there, catch the ball, and go run when the front-line guys are blocking their asses off.

“Kudos to our field-goal defence, because they were locked down. They give me faith and I hope I give them that same faith that if we get that blocked up right, we’re scoring on that.”

Sexton, in fact, felt he should have gone the distance for a 120-yard major on that play. There was, oddly enough, a benefit to not taking it all the way. That allowed the offence to burn 1:02 off the clock and leave Montreal’s offence with only 22 seconds in which to travel 83 yards on the final possession.

“It’s crazy to think about it, because it can go both ways,” Sexton said. “Say I don’t score and then we don’t score at all.

“We just executed at a high level. That’s what we do. It was kind of a rough game for us offensively, but we made it count when it mattered.”

Harris began the game-winning drive with a 16-yard completion to Dhel Duncan-Busby.

Then came back-to-back incompletions. With the game — perhaps the season — on the line, Harris spotted Johnson for 12 yards on third-and-10.

Johnson ran a “stop route” and Harris delivered the ball on time and on target.

“We run so many benders and so many outs (toward the sideline),” Harris explained. “We run double moves and corners. They were doing a good job of spot-dropping and taking away benders, because everybody in the league probably knows I love to throw bender routes.

“(Alouettes linebacker Tyrice Beverette) kind of spotted inside. I took my shoulder inside to him to make him buy it. He stayed inside and walled and it kind of opened up the lane to throw it to KeeSean and we were able to get that first down.”

Harris proceeded to spot Kian Schaffer-Baker for a seven-yard completion that put the popular pass-catcher over 1,000 yards for the first time in his six-year CFL career.

On second-and-three, Harris took off on a 22-yard run — his longest gain on foot since a 26-yarder for Montreal on the first play from scrimmage against the visiting Ottawa REDBLACKS on Sept. 2, 2022.

“They dispersed the box,” Harris said of Saturday’s scamper. “They allocated nine resources to the pass game, which they did a ton of. When they blitzed, they were only bringing four. There were a lot of simulated pressures.

“I felt that it was just a matter of time until they dispersed enough to where I could feel it and kind of step up. When I stepped up and started running, I knew I could get the first down.

“(Johnson) kind of sealed the guy, so I went outside. I thought, ‘I’d better get the ball tucked here,’ because I thought maybe somebody would come from the back and knock it out, because I’m not really especially a speedster anymore.”

Harris, who covered the 40-yard dash in an urgent 4.72 seconds at a Pro Day in 2010, ran out of bounds at Montreal’s 17-yard line with 33 seconds remaining.

Cue the game-winner to Johnson, who ran a vertical pattern on the far right. Harris released the ball when Johnson was on the 10-yard line. The precise pass was caught in stride, seven yards deep in the north end zone.

“Anybody who has played basketball knows that when you shoot a three-pointer, you kind of feel it come off your hand and you know it’s going to be good,” Harris said. “When I let it go, I kind of knew it was in there.

“It felt good coming off my hand and KeeSean ran underneath it. It’s kind of one of my throws. I love doing that.”

Brett Lauther added the convert, forcing Montreal to score a touchdown to win.

Lauther’s subsequent 78-yard kickoff was returned 25 yards by Rohan Jones. A nine-yard run by quarterback Dustin Crum, followed by his 12-yard completion to Jerreth Sterns, exhausted the scant time that remained.

“If you’ve been seeing a lot this whole season, finishing has been our problem,” Miller Jr. said after his nine-tackle, one-sack performance. “We came up short for not finishing. I think today we showed how we finish.

“The offence came up very clutch in the fourth quarter. The defence did what we had to do in the fourth quarter as well, so we did something that we haven’t really been doing all year. I think that’s the next step of this team moving forward.”

It was an important step to arrest a losing streak at four games and, in so doing, punch a ticket to the playoffs.

“We were on a little streak, but we overcame that,” Miller Jr. said. “Now it’s on to the next game (versus the visiting Edmonton Elks on Oct. 24).

“We did something that we were supposed to do. Now, did we do it how we were supposed to do it? If you ask me, no, but we still got the job done. Now it’s just about moving on.”