O’Leary: Fajardo grateful for playoff opportunity
MONTREAL — Cody Fajardo stood in the wilderness of free agency back in February and knew that he was at a crossroad.
After three seasons with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the team had closed the door on its relationship with him, benching him for its last-gasp shot at qualifying for the 2022 playoffs. The team quickly signed Trevor Harris, pulling him away from the Montreal Alouettes and leaving an opportunity on a team facing a myriad of off-season questions.
The Als were on the verge of an ownership change and with that uncertainty, general manager Danny Maciocia had lost a number of his players to the open market. But there was a starting quarterback job open in Montreal and a familiar face in head coach Jason Maas, who had been relieved of his offensive coordinator duties with the Riders just a few months earlier and hired by Maciocia shortly after.
Starting QB jobs were a rarity in free agency in 2023 and backup jobs weren’t even a guaranteed thing. Fajardo needed this connection to be made.
“A big part of the reason I’m still playing in the CFL is because coach Maas got the head coaching job here,” Fajardo told reporters on Friday. “I don’t know if coach Maas gets his job, I might have hung them up. It might have been it for me.”
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Instead, with Maas’ support and Maciocia’s faith in him, Fajardo inked a two-year deal. The Als went 11-7 this year and are hosting the Eastern Semi-Final for the second year in a row. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats step onto Molson Percival Stadium’s field, with the winner moving on to face the Toronto Argonauts in next week’s Eastern Final.
“To tell you the truth, the conversations I had with Danny and coach Maas leading into the free agency is, ‘Coach Maas can only do so much,’ it was Danny’s final decision. He watched every single rep of mine over the last three years as a starter. He was the one who gave the validation. He’s the one who offered me a two-year contract. That spoke volumes to me and it showed me that there is an investment in the club, there is belief in me to be a starting quarterback in this league and play at a high level again.”
Fajardo played in all 18 of the Als’ games this year and made 317-446 passes (at a league-leading 71.1 per cent) for 3,847 yards and 14 touchdowns to 12 interceptions.
This is the first 11-win season that the Alouettes have enjoyed since 2012. And for Fajardo, he’s happy to be back in the hunt for a Grey Cup, after seeing his season come to an end after game No. 18 last year.
“For me personally, I’m just extremely happy to be in a playoff game,” he said. “It was very difficult for me last year, sitting at home and watching other teams in the playoffs.
“We’re extremely proud of our 11-win season,” Fajardo said. “But at this point, everybody throws the records out and it’s a one-game season, one-game season, one-game season that equates to a three-game season.”
The 31-year-old wants to show the rest of the league that he can still perform on these big stages, the way he did his first two years in Saskatchewan, where the Riders made it to consecutive Western Finals. With those games comes valuable experience.
“I know not everything’s going to go our way tomorrow,” he said. “I wish it would but statistically it’s just not. Like coach Maas mentioned earlier, one of the things I talked to the team about after our walkthrough today was we weathered a lot of storms this year, and we never once started pointing fingers, we never started placing blame.
“Throughout games, we always believe that we can win even if we’re down multiple scores, there’s always a belief on that sideline. When you have an amazing team like that, you can play and kind of weather that storm a little bit easier.”
While the Als’ 31 offensive touchdowns are a league-low, they can go into Saturday’s game confident, having topped the Ticats in all three of their regular season meetings and have averaged 29 points in those wins.
I just want to see him efficiently run the offence, take what’s there, obviously be good with the football and just make good decisions,” Maas said of Fajardo.
“I mean, he’s done that down the stretch for us. He’s trusted the guys in front of him, trusted the guys around him and delivered. That’s what I want to see out of him, just making a decision. That’s what a quarterback does in the playoffs. Obviously when the big throws are being made, accuracy is paramount. But more than anything it just comes down to leading the guys and making good decisions on his part.
“Sometimes that decision is to tuck it, sometimes it’s the decision to throw it away but efficiently run the offence. That’s what we’d like to see.”
