After the Tre Ford quarterback experiment failed last year, the Edmonton Elks turned to the most accurate passer in CFL history in hopes of ending five years of futility.
Veteran signal-caller Cody Fajardo, who joined the team last year and signed a one-year contract extension this offseason, isn’t shying away from lofty expectations.
It took just one two-hour training camp session on Sunday for the two-time Grey Cup champion to declare this year’s roster “good enough to win a Grey Cup.”
Bold words for a team that has missed the CFL playoffs the last five years and hasn’t posted a winning regular-season record since 2017. Still, the first two days of training camp at old Clarke Stadium — site of some of the franchise’s great moments — were filled with enthusiasm and optimism.
The 34-year-old Fajardo said players talk about winning the Grey Cup on Day 1 and then “stop talking about it because then you want your focus to be right in front of you.”
“But you have to let the guys know what the end goal is. And the end goal is a Grey Cup. We have a Grey Cup-winning roster,” he said.
That would mark a massive turnaround for a team that finished 7-11 the last two seasons and will play its home exhibition game at Clarke Stadium before returning to Commonwealth Stadium, which is undergoing upgrades that include new turf ahead of a pre-World Cup soccer friendly.
Starting the season as the No. 1 quarterback is a role Fajardo knows well, so last year — when he stood on the sidelines and watched Ford and the team stumble to a 1-6 start — became a learning experience for the nine-year CFL veteran. Ford departed for Hamilton on a two-year deal in the off-season.
“Last year was new for me, and it helped me grow in ways that I didn’t think I would be able to grow,” said Fajardo, who owns the highest career completion percentage in CFL history at 71.53 among qualified quarterbacks. “So I grew as a player, I grew as a human, I grew as a man, as a quarterback. So I'm just implementing that into this training camp.”
He showed what he could do once he took over the starting role midway through last season. Fajardo, who won Grey Cups in 2017 with Toronto and 2023 with Montreal, completed 282 of 385 passes for 3,409 yards — the third-highest total of his career — and 14 touchdowns.
He also rushed for 319 yards and seven TDs.
All the Grey Cup talk will ring hollow if the team can’t avoid another poor start. The Elks opened 1-6 last season after going 0-7 in 2024, 0-9 in 2023 and 2-7 in 2022.
“It's everything right now for us,” Fajardo said of needing a strong start. “Those early games are really four-point games because they set you up later on, and you don't want to be in that chase-pack mentality when everybody's jockeying for position. At the end of the year, you want to put yourself in the driver's seat, and the only way you can do that is by winning early.”
He’s confident it can happen because, unlike previous seasons, there was no major overhaul to the roster.
“We don't have a bunch of new guys coming in, we don't have new systems that we have to learn. So we're able to have that continuity and jell a little bit quicker. And so I'm excited for that, and I'm excited just to see how these days continue to progress and how we continue to get better offensively, defensively, special teams.”
And make no mistake, this version of the Elks — which hasn’t made the playoffs since the franchise changed its name in 2020 — won’t be content to simply make the playoffs.
“This isn't a team that, oh, we just want to make the playoffs. Oh, we just want to make a run,” said Fajardo. “We want to win a Grey Cup. And this roster is good enough to win a Grey Cup.
“And for me, you know, you only have so many years left. So I'm in the business of winning games, and I'm in the business of winning Grey Cups. And so you talk about it Day 1, and then after that you focus on how we get better to get to that end goal.”
