‘Throw it all on me this year:’ Fajardo preparing for pressure-packed 2022

Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Cody Fajardo is hoping the 2022 CFL season ends in a photo finish.

“The motivation going into this year is winning that Grey Cup so my son can have an awesome baby picture in the Grey Cup,” a chuckling Fajardo told The Green Zone’s Jamie Nye and Drew Remenda.

Fajardo and his wife are expecting their first child in September, an arrival the 30-year-old QB says will give him a healthy dose of perspective.

And like any good quarterback, Fajardo has tried to prepare the best he can for what’s coming. In this case, that has meant reading books about raising children and getting pointers from other parents.

Even so, he’s well aware he won’t know everything when the baby arrives, so Fajardo’s not going to panic if something arises that he wasn’t prepared for.

“I think it’s going to make me hopefully a better quarterback too, where you’re not trying to be the perfect quarterback every time,” he said. “You’re just kind of going off your gut feel and I think that’s going to pay dividends for me — I hope, at least.”

Fajardo will freely admit he wasn’t perfect in the 2021 season.

He completed 281 of 404 pass attempts for 2,970 yards with 14 touchdowns and 11 interceptions and added 468 yards and four touchdowns along the ground. But he had just one 300-yard passing game and his pass attempts travelled an average of 7.4 yards, the lowest among quarterbacks who threw at least 250 passes last season.

Even so, Saskatchewan went 9-5-0 and advanced to the West Division final, where it lost to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for a second straight season.

During the Roughriders’ final media availability, Fajardo became emotional while discussing the way he was criticized on social media for his performance.

He now knows that kind of thing comes with playing quarterback in Saskatchewan and says he understands how to handle it.

“I learned a lot,” Fajardo said. “I learned it’s never as big as it is and it’s never as small as it really is. It’s kind of that happy medium.

“Looking back on the season, there were some things. I tried to do too much because we had a young team after getting plagued with some injuries. I remember looking around and offensively, halfway through the year, we had four starters that played in the 2019 West final starting in one game.

“I tried to take it upon myself and do too much. Anytime you do that as a quarterback, your play falters a little bit and when you try to be perfect, the little things become a little bit more challenging.”

So, in addition to books about babies, Fajardo also read some literature about psychology during the off-season. He now knows not to put what he called “perfection pressure” on himself.

“This year’s going to be pressure-packed,” he said. “Not only have we lost to Winnipeg in the West final in back-to-back years, (but also) I’m in a contract year, the Grey Cup’s in Sask. (and) I’m having a baby mid-season. It’s like, ‘Throw it all on me this year and let’s see what happens at the end of the year.’ ”

Some of the challenges in 2021 were out of Fajardo’s control, such as COVID-19 rules forcing the team to split into separate locker rooms and multiple meeting rooms or forcing Fajardo to meet virtually instead of face to face with offensive co-ordinator Jason Maas.

There also were injuries to starting receivers like Shaq Evans and Kyran Moore that forced others to step in.

Fajardo believes the experience the younger players gained will help this year, as will having the veterans back. Another factor will be having a pre-season in which to build familiarity.

The quarterback thinks it should all add up to better connections with his targets, particularly on deep balls.

“The continuity with receivers is going to help and knowing how guys run and what kind of balls guys like,” Fajardo said. “Some guys on deep balls like to stop, elevate and make a play — more Duke Williams-esque. Some guys like to just blow by dudes and you’ve got to throw it out in front of them, like Shaq Evans.

“Those are the things that you learn, but it’s very hard to learn in game-simulated situations.”

Fajardo had throwing sessions during the off-season with Evans and Kian Schaffer-Baker and came away confident. He and the receivers also are motivated by past criticism — “We’ve kind of deemed this as a revenge tour,” Fajardo said — and want to show people what the team can do.

The pivot also has something else to prove in 2022: His contract expires after the season.

“That’s something that’s definitely going to be added fuel to the fire for me,” Fajardo said. “But I look back to 2019 and that was a contract year for me as well and obviously (it was) a great year for me.

“Maybe the contract years are my good years, you never know.”