Shire: Roughriders’ Mace remains accountable even in winning effort

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Accountability for the Saskatchewan Roughriders on-field performance starts at the top.

Minutes after guiding his team to a 25-12 pre-season victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Monday, Riders’ head coach Corey Mace met with the media and was asked to assess his team’s performance in the win.

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While it could have been easy to point out some of the highlights and standout performances from the game, Mace elected to begin with things his team needs to clean up in what was a meaningless victory in the first week of the CFL’s exhibition schedule.

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“We came here to do what we wanted to do and that was win a football game,” said Mace. “But obviously the Achilles heel for us was the penalties.

“We’ve been hard on that really since camp started … just far too many for our liking, specifically on big plays.”

The Riders committed nine penalties for 85 yards including an offensive time-count violation, one off-setting unnecessary roughness penalty, one objectionable conduct penalty, a no-yards penalty, two offside infractions (one offence and one defence) and three special teams holding penalties.

Two of those calls, including an offside and holding on a return, took a couple of what would have been large gains off the board.

And while Mace said after the game that he wanted to take a deeper look and review which penalties were unnecessary, any amount is too many in his eyes.

“Some were happening at a high speed and we’ve just got to work better technique perhaps but just far too many for our liking, specifically on big plays,” said Mace. “We’ve got to do a much better job, so that’s the focus.”

Ever since he was hired in the off-season to replace Craig Dickenson, the 38-year-old Mace has been preaching accountability to his team.

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He mentioned it during his introductory press conference in December and last week on Day 2 of training camp in Saskatoon, CJME’s Jamie Nye asked the rookie head coach about what looked to be a form of discipline being handed to Riders’ fullback Bruno LaBelle during the workout.

“I wouldn’t call it discipline, we just call it accountability,” replied Mace. “Me and Bruno had a conversation and he stepped up to it and I’m pleased that he did it.”

While Mace harped on the penalty issues after the game, he also had positive things to say on Monday about his team’s performance and how they’re on the path of building who they want to be.

“Some things we’ve got to continue to work on but that’s I think coaching,” he said. “We’re always looking at the negatives but there were definitely tons of positives out there.”

While Mace will continue to keep a close eye on some positional battles this week as training camp resumes in Saskatoon on Wednesday ahead of Saturday’s second and final pre-season game in Edmonton (2 p.m. CKRM, CFL+), the head coach will also continue to preach accountability as he holds his players to a high standard, which is a standard he holds himself to as well.

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Case in point: After the game, the rookie head coach, who also serves as the defensive coordinator, was also asked about his performance.

“I did ok,” said Mace, who graded himself a C-plus. “I was probably too aggressive in a couple of things but there’s certain things that I think we’re trying to build an understanding of who we’d like to be.

“Definitely some work for myself to do and that’s the accountability and ownership that we talk about, no doubt.”

They can talk the talk, now they’ve got to walk the walk.

tshire@postmedia.com

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