The Saskatchewan Roughriders had talked all week about continuing to build momentum heading into the playoffs with a win in their regular season finale.

However, the Riders stumbled a bit heading into the post-season with a 28-13 loss to the Edmonton Eskimos on Saturday at Mosaic Stadium.

“We were undisciplined, took too many penalties, missed too many assignments and certainly I hope that’s not indicative of what we’ll do next week,” said Riders head coach Chris Jones after the game.

“All games are independent of one another, so what you did this week isn’t going to be indicative of what you do next week, so hopefully we can correct those issues.”

The Riders ended up committing 11 penalties for 124 yards and they turned the ball over twice in the loss.

It wasn’t a clean game for Saskatchewan and is one that the team is looking to put in the rearview mirror quickly with the playoffs arriving this week.

“It’s disappointing how we ended our season, but we know that there’s a new season ahead of us,” said Quarterback Brandon Bridge.  “Our mindset is that there’s three games left and we just need to win one game, then win another game and another game.  Our energy is still high because we know that we’re in the playoffs.”

Bridge replaced Kevin Glenn at quarterback for the third straight week, coming in for the second drive of the second quarter.  Bridge finished the game 12-of-18 for 162 yards with one touchdown.

Glenn was 5-of-10 for 63 yards before being replaced.

Bridge said he felt the team put together a good game in the loss.

“We fought pretty hard,” he said.  “We still have our spirits up, nobody has their head down.”

The Eskimos led the entire way, but the Riders were able to cut their lead down to 14-13 with Marcus Thigpen’s second touchdown of the day in the third quarter, but Edmonton scored 14 points in the fourth quarter to pull out the win.

Costly penalties at key times on defence allowed Edmonton to extend drives during the game.

“We had a lot of pre-snap penalties and they capitalized off them,” said linebacker Jeff Knox Jr.  “Every pre-snap penalty that we had, they took shots and made plays.  My hat goes off to Mike Reilly and their offence, they played extremely good.”

Reilly threw just six incomplete passes as he posted 294 yards passing, while he also rushed 10 times for 29 yards and three touchdowns to pace the Eskimos’ offence in the win.

The Riders were without both Trent Richardson and Cameron Marshall in the backfield in the game, but Thigpen filled in very well in his second appearance of the season as he found the end zone for the first time since 2011.  Thigpen finished with 32 yards rushing and a touchdown, while adding 31 yards receiving and another score.

“It felt great,” he said. “I was watching some old highlights this morning from when I was in Hamilton, I was just trying to get that feeling back and just visualizing myself getting in the end zone and to do it twice today, felt amazing.”

Riders receiver Bakari Grant finished with three catches for 38 yards, which gave him 1,033 yards for the season.  It was the veteran receiver’s first 1,000-yard season in seven CFL seasons.

“I put into a lot of work and for it to come to the end and to be able to get it from Kevin Glenn, who threw me my first pass in the CFL, it was pretty great,” said Grant after the game.

He added that the team will need to clean up their mistakes after this loss, “It’s not so much the loss, but how we played the game, the number of penalties, shooting ourselves in the foot at certain points throughout the game,” said Grant.

“It’s playoff time, we have three games ahead of us, one to focus on right now and that’s what we’re focused on.”

The loss gives the Riders a 10-8 record to finish the 2017 CFL season, which was good enough for fourth place in the West Division.  Saskatchewan will now crossover to the East Division and meet the Ottawa Redblacks in the East Semifinal this coming Sunday.

The West Semifinal will have the Eskimos heading to Winnipeg to take on the Blue Bombers.  Calgary won the West Division and Toronto captured the East Division title.

LaBatte Goes Down... Riders' Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman nominee Brendon LaBatte went down with an injury during the second quarter on Saturday.  Jones said after the game, "It does not look good... Anytime you lose your best offensive lineman that's tough. It's going to be something that we have to do, but that's football."