Cody Fajardo reflects on 2019, excited about what future holds

For the first time in his professional career, Cody Fajardo knows exactly what his future holds.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback is entering his fifth season in the CFL but it’s the first time he’s doing so as a team’s starter.

“The thing that I wasn’t prepared for was being as patient as I had to be (in the league),” Fajardo told the Green Zone. “When you’re an athlete, especially a professional athlete, you want to get out there and you want to help contribute as much as you can and it took me five years just to get an opportunity to start my first professional game.

“Every off-season it was always one of those things where I’d tell my wife, ‘Hey look, I don’t know. This could be my last year playing football. No one could call during free agency.’ Just to have that breath of fresh air brought into my career has been really good for me and my wife.”

Fajardo signed a two-year contract extension during the 2019 season, a deal that will keep him with the team through the 2021 season.

Fajardo is currently in Washington, D.C., while his wife Laura completes her studies at physical therapy school. While he has spent some time interacting with Roughriders fans — and he’ll be back in the Land of Living Skies for the Jan. 18 Saskatchewan Rush game — he said he has spent a lot of his time watching episodes of Seinfeld.

And if there was one grievance he had for this past Festivus, it was how the 2019 Roughriders season came to an end.

“The biggest thing about how the whole season ended was the fact that the play never got played out,” he said. “I can live with the last play of the game being an incompletion or an interception or obviously a touchdown, but the fact that when (the ball) hits the goal post it’s a dead play, it’s now just the woulda, shoulda, coulda — and that’s the argument I fight in my head very often.”

Despite the crossbar of the north-end uprights ending his 2019 season, Fajardo doesn’t want to see any sort of rule change or movement of the uprights.

“That’s what makes the CFL so special,” he said. “For me, I can guarantee you, my first pass in training camp I’m going to be on the left hash on the eight-yard line and I’m going to have (slotback) Kyran Moore stand in the middle of the end zone and I’m going to throw it over the bar just to make sure I end all these bad memories.”

Ahead of the Roughriders’ final regular-season game against the Edmonton Eskimos, Fajardo tore two oblique muscles during a practice. He missed the regular-season finale but played in the West Division final, a 20-13 loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Fajardo has spent a lot of time recovering from the injury and he has been cleared by doctors to begin throwing again on Jan. 21.

“I’m really excited to get the football back in my hands. It’s kind of one of those injuries where it’s just time and there’s nothing you can do to make it go any quicker other than patience,” Fajardo said.

He said he doesn’t usually begin throwing until late February during the off-season.

“This year I’m going to change that a little bit,” he said. “Just with the injury, I want to be able to gradually build up my stamina so that when I get into training camp, it’s not like I’m throwing 100, 200 balls a day for the first time.”

In his first season as a professional starter, Fajardo completed 338 of 473 pass attempts for 4,302 yards, 18 touchdowns and eight interceptions. He also did a lot of damage on the ground, rushing for 611 yards and 10 touchdowns.

During the season he endeared himself to Roughriders fans through interviews and charity initiatives. He said the fans also turned the off-season into a special one for him and his family.

“I think the coolest thing about my holidays this year was seeing the reaction of fans opening up a Fajardo jersey on their Christmas day and that was so cool that they were sharing the videos with me,” Fajardo said.

“I’d show my wife and I’d show my family and it would just bring a smile to our family’s face to be represented by another family with our last name on the back of the jersey.”

When he returns to the Roughriders in 2020, he’ll have a new person calling the plays, with Jason Maas taking over as the team’s offensive co-ordinator.

“Coach Maas and I have had a lot of conversations through the holidays. When he got signed, he said I was one of the first guys he called, which meant a lot to me,” Fajardo said.

“He wants to build the offence around my strengths and doesn’t want to change too much. The biggest thing is that he doesn’t want to reteach an entire new offence to a bunch of guys who have got familiarity with each other.”

As he looks back at the season that was for him, Fajardo said he’s grateful for how football brought his family closer together.

“For (his family) to all sit down — it doesn’t matter where they’re at — and to watch me play football, which is something they’ve done my entire career is support me, it gave them something to talk about,” he said. “After the game the phone lines were buzzing no matter win, lose or draw.”

Moncrief finds a home

Linebacker Derrick Moncrief, whom the Roughriders released Wednesday so he could test the NFL waters, has landed with the Las Vegas Raiders.

Moncrief, 26, was to become a CFL free agent Feb. 11. Saskatchewan let him go early so he could pursue NFL opportunities — and he signed a reserve/future contract with the Raiders.

Moncrief spent the past three seasons with the Roughriders. In 2019, he recorded 69 defensive tackles, four special-teams tackles, four sacks, three interceptions and one forced fumble in 17 regular-season games en route to being named a West Division all-star and a CFL all-star.