The Saskatchewan Roughriders faced the Edmonton Eskimos in their home opener at Mosiac Stadium in Regina Saskatchewan and the teams were meet with hail the size of snowball at the time when the game was to start but the game was delayed almost 10 minutes to get the hail of the field. After the pasce of the game went smoothly but the Eskimos came out and beat the Roughriders defense like a rent moue as Eskimos quarterback Rick Ray did what he wanted against the defense the Roughriders put in front of him as his receivers were wide open as he hooked up with Jason Barnes twice in the first quarter that sandwiched a Roughriders drive that was capped off by a 14 yard td pass from Darian Durant to Efrem Hill and the Eskimos lead 14-7 after the first quarter.
In the second quarter the Eskimos added to their lead with two David Duval and then a TD run from 5 yards out by Daniel Porter made it 27-10 but then the Roughriders came back into the game with 10 straight points capped off by a Wes Cates TD leap into the end zone as he had a 24 yard TD run to cut the Eskimos lead to 27-20 at half time.
In the third quarter the Eskimos demonstrated their muscle in the second by continuing to pick a part the riders defense by scoring when Ray hooked up with former roughrider Adarius Bowman on a 4 yard TD pass and then another former roughrider Kerry Joesph came off the bench and scored on a quarterback sneak in the fourth quarter to give the Eskimos a 42-20 lead and then finally Darain Durant put up a second half score hooking up with Jason Clermount to make the finally score 42-28 Eskimos.
Darian Durant completed a lot of passes but it was the 2 interception that hurt the roughriders offense along with the lack of defense to get a 2 and out as they only had 3 or 4 in the entire game which means that defensive coach Hall will need to work with his defense on assignments before the next game and hopefully the injured defensive players soon.
Durant is now 3 and 5 against the Eskimos which is the other losing record against the 8 teams in the CFL besides Montreal who he is 2 and 3
Tom Mehegan
