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The Saskatchewan Roughriders' season, which ended in a 33-12 playoff loss to the B.C. Lions on Saturday, is hardly one to be ashamed of, given all the twists and turns the Grey Cup defending champions faced during the past several months.

But beneath the layers of adversity overcome this CFL season, especially because of injuries, is the plain truth that it's virtually impossible to succeed in Canadian football without stability at quarterback.

The Roughriders won the Grey Cup a year ago with Kerry Joseph, the CFL's 2007 outstanding player, then traded him to the Toronto Argonauts in the off-season over a contract dispute.

And though Joseph struggled mightily in Toronto this season, the Roughriders were never able to replace him. They finished the season without a quarterback who could be counted on to get them through all four quarters of a game.

Saskatchewan players and management put on a brave face the past month or so, as quarterbacks Michael Bishop, Darien Durant and Steven Jyles were rotated in and out of the lineup from week to week. But that situation was neither conducive to team chemistry off the field nor to consistency on it. And that showed as Riders quarterbacks fired 13 interceptions during the final four games of the regular season, then followed that up with a seven-turnover performance against the Lions on Saturday.

“When the quarterback is the natural leader on the team and when that leading role is going week to week, it's hard to find your identity as a team,” Saskatchewan running back Wes Cates said. “You don't want to be questioning anything going into the playoffs, let alone who your starting quarterback is. That's something we need to figure out, but it's not in the players' hands. It's the coach and the [front] office.”

Just how the Roughriders address their quarterback situation will be a topic hot enough to warm the long, cold Prairie winter.

Any thought that Bishop could be the answer would seem to have vanished with his performance on Saturday, in which he coughed up the ball three times in the first quarter alone, once on a fumble and twice on interceptions.

Bishop's half-season in Saskatchewan proved that he is everything he seemed to be during his years with Toronto: an immensely talented quarterback who is as capable of killing a team with his mistakes as he is of lifting it with his big-play ability.

“It's been like a hurricane,” Bishop said of his season, which began in Toronto with a quarterback controversy with Joseph. “You go through so much and you want to just concentrate on football. For me, it started back in March with the trade and [Toronto] not being up front. I'll never use that as an excuse. It's up to me to play well when I go on the field.”

If Bishop isn't the quarterback answer, the question becomes whether the Riders have one in-house or whether they'll need to go outside in the off-season.

“Could be, but perhaps we'll have to see,” Miller said when asked whether he saw Bishop, Durant, Jyles or fourth-stringer Dalton Bell as the answer in 2009. “Certainly a preferable situation for any team would be to have an established quarterback and we would like to do that as we move forward.”

As for quarterbacks who might be available in the off-season, Casey Printers of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats comes to mind, although he's coming off a dreadful year. How about the return of Joseph from Toronto? Stranger things have happened.

Beyond those, however, there would seem to be few proven options available. Which is why the most intriguing dilemma in the off-season for Saskatchewan may be what to do with Durant, who was brilliant during some early-season starts, but couldn't secure the job late in the season when the opportunity came his way.

Durant clearly has no interest in being part of another quarterback carousel. But with free agency coming in February, he is also in no hurry to get a ticket out of Regina.

“I look at this season as a stepping stone for my career and I want to build on it from here,” Durant said. “I would love to come back. This is the best place to play in the CFL, but it's out of my hands.

“As a player, you have to take the best opportunity. Your career is only so long. If you have a chance to play somewhere, you have to take advantage of it. I would like to think that place would be here.”