Courtesy Regina Leader Post:

Lance Frazier’s name kept popping up in stories about the Saskatchewan Roughriders last year, mostly for the wrong reasons.

To be fair, he was once nominated for the CFL’s defensive player-of-the-week award because he returned a fumble for a touchdown in a Roughriders victory. But the other stories usually listed an injured part of his anatomy in brackets after his name, like this: (foot); (hamstring); (knee).

It happened again during this year’s training camp: (heel).

“My heel was bugging me in the preseason,” said Frazier, who gets a second straight start at defensive halfback Friday when the Roughriders visit the B.C. Lions, whose lineup features a breakaway slotback (Geroy Simon) and a bruising slotback (Jason Clermont).

“It was a small, nagging injury. It happens to be on the part of the body you need the most as a defensive back. I would love to actually not be on the nine-game injury list, like I was, basically, last year, although they weren’t consecutive. When I look back, that’s pretty well what it ended up being. I’ve never really been prone to injury, but last season for some reason the injury bug hit me hard.”

Frazier, 27, seemed in fine health for the Roughriders’ season-opening, 34-13 victory over the Edmonton Eskimos. Like Frazier, the Roughriders are desperately hoping for stability in their secondary after a wave of injuries through 2007 forced the team to deploy 16 different defensive backs in the five positions, with 12 different starting units. It resulted in the Roughriders allowing 292 passing yards per game; only the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (305) were worse.

In their season opener against Edmonton quarterback Ricky Ray, arguably the CFL’s top passer, the Roughriders surrendered 258 passing yards.

“We all know we had a young secondary last year; we had Omarr (Morgan) leave, (Davin) Bush leave, (Jackie) Mitchell leave, a lot of guys. Then you lose the captain of the defence in Eddie Davis,” said Frazier. “We suffered. We did a good job in the offseason bringing in guys who could compete. In case we do have those injuries this year, they can fit right in and I would feel comfortable.”

Because of his NFL experience, including eight games as a starting cornerback for the Dallas Cowboys in 2004, Frazier was expected to be a major part of Saskatchewan’s secondary in 2007.

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