Darian Durant found another level in helping lead the Saskatchewan Roughriders to a Grey Cup victory last season. Javier Aquino Jersey . For an encore, hell have to find an even higher level still. Durant was sensational last year, posting career numbers (325-531 for 4,154 passing yards, and a career best 31 touchdowns to just 12 interceptions), and featuring regularly in the MOP Watch. By the increasingly criticized metric that is Quarterback Rating, Durant had the best year of his career last year at 95.7, a full seven points higher than his career mark. But Durant had an awful lot of help on the teams third-ranked offence. First and foremost was league all-star and team nominee for Most Outstanding Player Kory Sheets. In his sophomore CFL campaign Sheets was second in league rushing with 1,598 yards and a gaudy 5.6 yards per carry average and 12 touchdowns. His Grey Cup performance will also be remembered in Saskatchewan – and Hamilton, albeit much less fondly – for years to come. The 29-year-old will be preparing for NFL training camp in Oakland when the Roughriders begin their title defence, and while hes in tough to make the Raiders roster, the best case scenario for Saskatchewan is a return sometime around Labour Day. Another Roughriders mainstay and fan favourite Durant will no longer have at his disposal is slight receiver Weston Dressler. The 57 slotback was a 1,000-yard receiver in five of his six CFL seasons, falling just 59 yards short in his sophomore campaign, and scored a combined 45 touchdowns. Durant and Dresslers time in Saskatchewan had coincided, the two emerging together in 2008. But now the favourite target is in Kansas City with no guarantee of returning. So this year Durant enters the unquestioned leader on offence, and with more unknowns on the roster than previous seasons, hell have to shoulder a greater load. The good news of course is that the cupboard isnt completely bare. While Dresslers sure hands and elusiveness will be missed in the receiving corps, two other pass catchers, ones still on the roster, eclipsed the 1,000-yard mark as well last season in Chris Getzlaf, who led the team with 1,045, and Taj Smith, who hit the mark in just his second season. And if Rob Bagg can stay healthy all year, that will be another receiver for Durant to lean on. The running back position is much more of a toss-up heading into the season. The team has five RBs with a combined two carries CFL experience (Clifton Smith, which he gained with the Calgary Stampeders last season). But the last time they tried to replace a solid veteran running back, Wes Cates in 2012, they found a guy who would one day lead them to a Grey Cup victory at home. So, theres hope. Things could work out around Durant; he may have a support staff as talented as the one hoisting the Grey Cup alongside him last year. But the inexperience and uncertainty heading into the season alone means hell have to do even more as both a leader and performer to keep the Roughriders in Grey Cup contention. The football crazy fans in Saskatchewan already love their veteran quarterback; if he can elevate his game and bring more success to the province, theyll cherish him even more. Notes Expansion Draft Roughriders fans were surprised to see DT Keith Shologan get picked by the Ottawa Redblacks in the national portion of the expansion draft after the veteran spent the past six seasons in Saskatchewan. Ottawa also grabbed Shologans backup in Zack Evans one round later, it being evident the Roughriders were making a ratio change. OT James Lee was Saskatchewans international loss in the draft. Coach of the YearIn his second season as head coach of the Roughriders, Corey Chamblin had a dream year. He led Saskatchewan to a scorching start to the season before guiding them to a Grey Cup win in front of a boisterous hometown crowd. Chamblin was awarded in the off-season with the leagues Coach of the Year award, beating out former Roughriders coach Kent Austin. Free Agency The Roughriders lost a lot more talent in free agency than they signed back. Notable losses included S Craig Butler, LBs Abraham Kromah and Graig Newman, WR Kierre Johnson, RB Jock Sanders, and QB Drew Willy, not to mention Kory Sheets and Weston Dressler who are now in the NFL. The team did lock up some of their pending free agents however, including DBs Paul Woldu and Terrell Maze, and WR Taj Smith. CFL DraftThe Roughriders traded out of the first round, stock piling picks later in the draft. With their first pick in the second round the team landed CFL Combine star Dylan Ainsworth, a DL from Western, before also grabbing WR Alex Pierzchalski from Toronto. Saskatchewan also had two picks in the third round, nabbing John Mark from Calgary and WR Kristopher Bastien from Concordia. Their remaining picks included DB Matt Webster from Queens and OL Kyle Paterson from Regina in the fifth round, LB Travis Bent from Concordia in the sixth round, and OL Terry Hart from St. Francis Xavier in the seventh round. New Mosaic StadiumRoughriders fans got a glimpse at the teams new stadium late in the off-season and not much longer ground was broken. The $278 million project should be completed by August 2016 and will give the 33,000 fans surely to pack the place on a regular basis a more comfortable viewing experience than the one they are getting now. Carlos Pena Jersey . - The Baltimore Ravens and tight end Dennis Pitta reached agreement on a five-year contract Friday. George Corral Jersey . Ricciardo made it only halfway around the Jerez track before his RB10 rolled to a stop and began spouting smoke from the back. After team mechanics tended to the car, Ricciardo went back out for a mere two trips around the circuit before calling it quits. http://www.soccermexicojerseysteamshop.com/candido-ramirez-mexico-jersey/ . According to the Red Wings Twitter feed, Zetterberg plans to practice with the team on Thursday and is aiming for a second round comeback.The National Hockey League’s scheduling process strikes me as a laborious task. The people responsible for creating the thirty team schedules have to take into account things like venue availability, travel burden, associated costs of travel, and competitive balance, all while trying to squeeze 1,230 games into a seven-month window. One of the things I’ve always found most interesting is how the league attempts to mitigate the number of back-to-back situations (not so eloquently referred to as “schedule losses” in NHL and NBA circles), a considerable slice of the league’s larger fight with competitive balance. To the league’s credit, Dirk Hoag’s work suggests that the league does try to schedule a comparable number of back-to-back situations for every franchise. Now, the eyeball test has long been damning of team performance on the second-half of back-to-backs, and I think that’s largely why the league has really made a concerted effort to balance the number of schedule losses around the league. The data substantiates what the eyeball test has told us for so long – teams on no rest struggle considerably relative to league norms, considerably so when those back-to-backs come on the road. Seven years of available data substantiates what the eyeball test has told us for so long – teams on no rest struggle considerably relative to league norms. Below, I have compiled Score-Adjusted Fenwick%, 5-on-5 Goal%, and Regulation/OT Win% for teams in back-to-back situations. They are slotted next to your league-average rates, to illustrate the drop-off between the two. (Score-Adjusted Fenwick% is a measure of 5-on-5 unblocked shot attempts, weighted for score, comparing results to league averages based on game score.) The Value of Rest Score-Adjusted Fenwick% Goal% Regulation/OT Win% Back-to-Back Home 51.0% 51.0% 53.0% All Home 52.0% 52.0% 56.0% Back-to-Back Road 47.0% 46.0% 41.0% All Road 48.0% 49.0% 44.0% So, teams without rest against teams with rest of ranging length are going to underperform – we see a three percentage drop-off in regulation/overtime win percentage for both home and road teams, which really is the smoking gun. It’s also hard to miss that possession and goal metrics slide in both states, too. Home teams drop a full percentage point on both fronts. Road teams drop a percentage point in possession rates, and three percentage points in goal rates. But, back-to-back situations – or “schedule losses” -- aren’t the only instance where a team is disadvantaged. The theory isn’t just that teams devoid of rest are at a disadvantage. Guillermo Ochoa Jersey. It’s that teams disproportionately rested to the opposition are at a disadvantage, in which back-to-back situations are only a small part of a large sample. Let’s change gears and turn to rest differentials. We can pull data for how teams perform with three days favorable rest, two days favorable rest, one day favorable rest, and so forth. If our theory holds true, performance – be it by possession rates, goal rates, or win rates – should deteriorate as rest becomes less advantageous, and travel becomes more frequent. Over the same seven years of data, here’s how home teams performed over various rest differentials. Home Team Rest Advantage 2007-2014 Rest Advantage Score-Adjusted Fenwick% Goal% Regulation/OT Win% 3 or more day deficit 50.9% 48.3% 52.3% 2-day deficit 51.1% 50.6% 54.9% 1-day deficit 51.6% 51.9% 54.2% Even 51.3% 52.0% 55.3% One-day advantage 52.1% 53.4% 58.9% Two-day advantage 52.6% 54.0% 58.3% 3 or more day advantage 51.9% 51.7% 51.6% I think this graph is about as telling as it gets. As you increase a home team’s rest advantage, their possession rates, goal rates, and win rates all spike. The inverse, of course, is true for road teams – as they see rest become more unfavourable, possession rates decline, goal rates decline, and win rates decline. Again, this gets very much back to what our eyes tell us – that teams who have rest advantages generally play a better hockey game, and teams that are fatigued generally play a worse hockey game. More importantly, it signifies that not all games are created equal. A home team with a two-game rest disadvantage is only expected to control 51.09% of the play, 50.58% of the 5-on-5 goals, and win 54.87% of the games. A home team with a two-game rest advantage should be held to significantly higher standards: on average, they should control 52.64% of play, score 54.04% of the goals, and win 58.25% of the hockey games. It seems certain to me that the league would be privy to this sort of data and reluctant to put teams into positions where they are regularly at a rest disadvantage, but it’s still an important topic that should be considered when forecasting future outcomes. Rightfully, analysts spend a lot of time talking up the importance of home-ice advantage – the data bears this advantage out. However, this data suggests that rest is another critical, albeit less appreciated, factor for teams and associated performance. 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