Cody Fajardo admits he used to ‘count wins’ against Edmonton Elks before season started

Photo courtesy: Edmonton Elks

If you’ve ever claimed the free space on a Bingo card, you’ve got a pretty good idea of how CFL opponents treated road games at Commonwealth Stadium in the first half of this decade.

While every player or coach who entered the building shared the appropriate clichés and platitudes publicly, Cody Fajardo can finally admit what it was like playing against the Edmonton Elks when the franchise was at its lowest.

“To be completely honest with you guys, in prior years, there’s a couple of times you would just circle it on your calendar and be like, ‘Yep, that’s a win,'” Edmonton’s franchise quarterback admitted this week, thinking back to his time with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Montreal Alouettes.

“We did really everything we could to change that culture, change that mindset so that when you do see the Elks on your schedule, you know it’s going to be a physical game; it’s going to be a four-quarter game. Years prior, playing against the Elks, it was kind of one of those things where you’d circle it and before the season starts, you can kind of almost count your wins before you play the game. We’ve worked tremendously hard from the top of the organization down to the players to make this place extremely hard.”

The Elks had gone a combined 25-61 over the past five seasons entering this year and had not made the playoffs since 2019, but their misery at home was particularly pronounced. From October 2019 until August 2023, the Green and Gold recorded 22 consecutive defeats at Commonwealth Stadium, setting a record for the longest home losing streak in North American professional sports history.

Fans in the City of Champions went 1,415 days without seeing a single win with their own eyes, but those days are long gone now. The Elks are currently first in the West Division at 10-4 and have already clinched a postseason berth, with six of those victories coming at home. Drooping attendance at the start of the year has spiked as the team has asserted its legitimacy, with two contests surpassing the 30,000-fan mark.

“Credit to our fans; our fans are making it hard to play in this arena. We have this beautiful stadium that only looks good if we have a lot of fans in it, and so our fans have done a tremendous job of helping us change the identity of the Concrete Castle of the North,” Fajardo said.

“I can speak to this as a quarterback. When you see ticket sales in away arenas, and you see that it’s trending in the right direction, it makes you think about snap count. It makes you think about different plays that you’ve got to call because you know it’s going to be tough. You can’t go no-huddle as much.”

The Elks will be grateful for the support of a friendly crowd this week after suffering an uncharacteristic loss in Toronto last Saturday. Thanks to a pair of end zone interceptions from Fajardo, the Argonauts prevailed 24-19 and set a CFL record for the lowest time of possession in a win.

While that result pushed the team further away from securing a playoff game at Commonwealth, Fajardo believes it could be a positive for the group overall.

“We have the belief in this locker room that we are gonna win every game, and that’s part of the mental fortitude that you have to have, but to tell you the truth, it’s almost better losing earlier. You almost put your backs up against the wall, and now you’re playing playoff football,” he explained.

“What I told the guys after the game is we’re playing playoff football from here to the end of the year, to the Grey Cup in November. This is playoff football. Every game means so much more. We didn’t do ourselves any favours, and I don’t think this team wants it to be easy. If you look at the course of our season, nothing has been easy. Put us in some tough situations and see what this football team does. We’ve already shown that we were able to do it. It’s almost like we want this. We wanna make it hard on ourselves, and that’ll help us mentally go through it.“

A fired-up Edmonton team probably doesn’t bode well for their opponents this week, as the Hamilton Tiger-Cats are hanging onto their own postseason hopes with bloodied fingernails. With quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell lost for the year, the preseason East Division frontrunners have been bludgeoned to the brink of elimination.

However, while the records appear lopsided, Fajardo isn’t willing to say whether he has circled this game as a victory on the calendar — at least not yet.

“It’s a Hamilton team that’s going to scratch, claw, and fight because they’re still in it,” he insisted. “One thing I can say, watching them on tape, their defence has kept them in a lot of football games. They have a lot of veteran guys on defence. Offensively, we’re going to have our hands full. They have some really good, talented football players, and their defence is trending in the right direction. It’s going to be tough for us offensively.”

The Edmonton Elks (10-4) will host the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (4-10) on Saturday, September 26, with kickoff scheduled for 7:00 p.m. EDT. The Tabbies lost to the Montreal Alouettes last week, while the Elks narrowly lost to the Toronto Argonauts.

The game will be broadcast on TSN in Canada and CFL+ internationally. Radio listeners can tune in on the Ticats Audio Network in Hamilton or 880 CHED in Edmonton.