Taylor Shire
Regina Leader-Post
It took some fast thinking for Marc Mueller to call a quick kick.
With time winding down in Sunday’s Labour Day Classic, instead of electing to kick a 51-yard field goal, the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ offensive coordinator called for quarterback Trevor Harris to punt the ball on third down as the Green and White were hoping to catch the opposing Winnipeg Blue Bombers off guard.
The play — which was a key moment in Saskatchewan’s 34-30 win — worked almost flawlessly as Harris punted the ball 45 yards before receiver Joe Roubstelli downed Bombers defensive back Deatrick Nichols in the end zone for a single point.
“If it didn’t turn out the way that it did, you probably second guess it a bit,” said Mueller, who consulted with head coach Corey Mace and special team coordinator Kent Maugeri before the trio decided to call the play. “In close games, there’s going to be four or five of those plays that you’re going to second guess.
“And we were fortunate that our guys executed it to the level they did.”
While it was the first time Mueller called a quick kick in his coaching career, it’s a play that has been discussed nearly every week since he first entered the CFL as an assistant with the Calgary Stampeders in 2014.
“I’ve been in the league for I guess 10 or 11 years, whatever it is now, and there’s all these scenarios that you talk about in training camp, and you review them once a week,” said Mueller, whose team is set to visit Winnipeg on Saturday (2 p.m., TSN) in the second half a the home-and-home series in Week 14 of the CFL season. “That’s the first time we’ve ran that one. And we’ve been practising that one since I was in the league in Calgary.
“It’s pretty cool to actually do it, because now you actually have real film, other than just talking about when it could happen.”
Last year in the Western semifinal, the Roughriders were on the other end of a quick kick as B.C. Lions quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. booted a ball 44 yards which went out of bounds at Saskatchewan’s six-yard line.
According to Roughriders historian Rob Vanstone, Harris’ kick on Sunday was the first time since 1990 that a quarterback (Kent Austin) punted the ball from behind the line of scrimmage. It was also the first time since 1985 that the Roughriders scored a rouge on a quarterback punt after Joe Paopao executed the feat that season, according to Vanstone.
“It used to happen more commonly,” said Mueller. “If you ever watched the old school CFL games, teams would do it even on second down to try to catch a team off guard.
“There’s some clips of (former Riders quarterback Ron) Lancaster flipping it back to Al Ford, which was easy, because Al Ford was a receiver and the punter.
“It’s one of those things you talk about every week. And then, you know, it might happen once every 10 or 11 years.”
In fact, it’s such a unique scenario that the Roughriders hadn’t even practise the play before. Instead, Mueller took Harris’ word that the quarterback could even punt the ball.
“Mueller asked me a couple weeks ago, ‘Can you punt?’ ” Harris said after the game. “And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ He kind of just took my word for it.”
“Maybe it’s one of those things that’s better not to know,” said Mueller. “He’s just got to say he can do it, and you trust him. And then we get into the scenario, and you hope it turns out the way it did.”
Part of what made the play so effective was great coverage by Robustelli and the receivers, which drew props from Mueller and Harris.
“Joe was down there fast,” said Mueller. “He looked pretty good at that.”
“That was a great tackle by Joe,” added Harris.
For Robustelli, it was his first career tackle after playing one snap of punt coverage in the pre-season.
“Trev threw a nice punt out there and my job is to go down there and make a play,” said Robustelli, a second-year receiver. “I kind of put my head down out there and saw him take the ball to the end zone.
“And you know, I played a little bit of tackle football back in the day when I was younger, so I still feel like I know how to form tackle so I put my head across his body and just tried to make a play.”
Meanwhile Harris — who was seen stretching his hamstrings before the snap on Sunday — said he kicked a few times in college with the Edinboro Fighting Scots from 2006-09 and practised it once in his rookie CFL season with the Toronto Argonauts in 2012.
But Sunday was the first time the 39-year-old veteran — who has 36,062 passing yards and 1,165 rushing yards in his CFL career — has been called upon in a pro game.
“(The stretch) was right when we broke the huddle,” said Harris. “I was like, ‘Ah, I better not yank a hammy here,’ so I just kind of give it a quick stretch.
“I wouldn’t think that they would be like, ‘He’s stretching his hamstring, he’s going to punt it.’
“I was like, ‘Let’s go get a safety. I’m a weapon,’” he joked. “I’d done it before college a few times, and kind of just put it on the ol’ foot and kick ‘er down there, try and put it outside the hash, that way we have a chance to possibly recover it but give our guys a chance to kind of throw the net out and make a make a tackle and get them backed up if we can.
“And I knew worst case scenario, if I kind of put it out there and kind of let it roll, the worst case scenario would kind of be a single and best case scenario I thought we kind of pin them deep and make them go 108 yards against our defence.”
Did Mueller ever consider the worst-case scenario before he called in the play?
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Unfortunately, as a coach, a lot of the times you think about — on any play — what can go wrong more than what can go right, which is why you lack sleep and you’re stressed, and you look like you’re 55 and you’re (actually) 36.”
