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There have been a lot of questions flying around Rider Nation about the state of the Saskatchewan Roughriders offence.

Since their bye in Week 6, the Green and White have only topped 30 points twice compared to their work pre-bye when they hit over 30 points in each of their first five games.

It didn't appear to be a problem for the first few games as the team continued to reel off wins, but now in the midst of a three-game losing streak in which they've scored 64 points combined, it's starting to become an issue.

“Not this past week, but the week before, we had three plays that probably in the first 7-8 weeks we made those plays and scored touchdowns and for whatever reason, we didn't make them in that game and it ended up being a two-point loss,” said offensive coordinator George Cortez.  “Sometimes it's just that simple.  How do you explain that? Sometimes you can't explain it.”

Cortez as adamant that it wasn't just one thing plaguing their offence right now, but they just aren't making plays.

“Obviously you always say it's the protection, we dropped too many balls, we didn't run the ball well, it's usually all of those things or none of them,” he said.

“We had opportunities in the last two games, even though we didn't play our best, to if we make the two points at the end we tie the game and we did a nice job of getting the touchdown, but it didn't work out in the end.  You always take what happened and move on and try to get better the next week.”

As Cortez said, there are many things that have contributed to the Riders offence slowing down over the past seven games, whether it be injuries to keep players like Kory Sheets or Chris Best, or as quarterback Darian Durant pointed to missed opportunities.

“We had some breakdowns in protection where we would have a couple touchdowns on those plays where we had guys running wide open, we fumbled and put our defence in bad spots and just a lack of execution,” Durant said.

Head coach Corey Chamblin isn't worried about the offensive struggles and feels that the group will work their way through and find a way to put together a full sixty minutes.

“As we continue to go along, we have six games left in the regular season, and I know we have a good offensive coordinator, a good offensive crew and I think we'll get things turned around and back to those high scoring ways,” said Chamblin.

How they're going to do that wasn't said, but Chamblin feels this stretch of games will only make them stronger going forward.

“That's a part of football and a part of chasing a championship is the teams that can weather through all the adversity and all the different things that football presents you, I think it does make you better when it all comes back together,” he said.

“We'll do what we need to do.  We've lost the last three and that's tough, but there's no excuses on who played and who didn't play, at the end of the day, we've got to win football games and no matter how tough it is, guys just have to continue to do what they do and get better.”

Help could be on the way for the Riders as Sheets was back at practice on Wednesday, although he wasn't in pads and has been ruled out this week, Chamblin said he will start progressing towards getting back in the line-up.

“He's looking a little bit better,” he said.  “He'll continue to go through individual this week and he'll practice a little bit more next week, so that was a plus for him.”

The offensive line, which hasn't been the same since Best was injured, could get the guard back soon as he, along with Ben Heenan, were both back practicing as well.  They weren't working with the first-team yet, but that would be a big boost.

Defensively, there were some key players missing from Wednesday's workout as linebacker Weldon Brown, and defensive backs Macho Harris and Carlos Thomas were all absent.  Chamblin classified Brown as day-to-day and said he could be back practicing by the end of the week.

The Riders will be back at Mosaic Stadium on Thursday for practice as they continue to get ready for a trip to Montreal and the Alouettes coming up on the weekend.  They hit the field at Molson Stadium on Sunday at 11:00am.