Ex-BC Lions QB Fajardo makes experts eat their words in Grey Cup

Dan Hamilton/USA TODAY Sports | @CFL/X

So, uh, regarding Cody Fajardo…

And for those asking, alas the audio is lost from that 1040 post-game show Lowell Ullrich and I did following BC’s 48-8 loss in Hamilton in the 2018 East Division semi-final. And even if it was found, dadgummit, we don’t have the right to play it.

That’s Bell Media property. May it forever stay lost.

But I will mea culpa on the former Lions backup turned Grey Cup MVP Sunday night.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong… wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Couldn’t have been more wrong if I was Mr. Wrong the Mayor of Wrongville.

I am, however, comforted to be joined on the Wrong List by such distinguished company.

Asked our boy Farhan Lalji of TSN last week who he liked. He cited Fajardo not being a championship-calibre quarterback.

Sportsnet’s Arash Madani had the same remark. Read it on 3 Down Nation’s game predictions, too.

Just not buying into Cody Fajardo being a championship QB. If Montreal wins today, it'll have to be because of everyone else.

From Tim Hortons Field, @JDunk12 et moi set up Grey Cup 110 with some honest takes — pic.twitter.com/fwfpNvqlcr

— Arash Madani (@ArashMadani) November 19, 2023

And each time I heard or read that, my whole body recoiled. Have covered enough Grey Cups to know a plucky underdog with a chip on its shoulder is a formula for upsets.

Fajardo completed 21 of 26 passes for 290 yards and three touchdowns, the final one to Delta’s Tyson Philpot for the win with 11 second remaining.

Fajardo said that final drive felt like a movie. I’d say it felt like a horror flick from my seat, but in all honesty, I was pulling for the guy.

It’s hard to like Mike O’Shea and Winnipeg. Fajardo, when not running quarterback sneak, is inoffensive. And is a great story to punctuate the 2023 CFL season.

Want to thank our friend Jason Brough for digging up one of my tweets on old Cody.

November 11th, 2018, same day as the playoff loss in Hamilton:

I've been done with the Cody Fajardo experiment for some time. He's not a particularly good athlete, he runs small at 6-5, 215, and he's not the future QB.

— Matthew Sekeres (@mattsekeres) November 11, 2018

Now, if we are keeping receipts… seems the Lions were also done with Fajardo. He was off to Saskatchewan that offseason where he, ahem, turned into a West Division Most Outstanding Player.

He still doesn’t want to run all that much, albeit his scramble on 2nd-and-20 on that final drive was a critical play.

And you may have noticed, Montreal takes him out when running the QB sneak. For a guy who blew two QB sneaks at the goal-line Sunday night.

But, hey, I get it. Let’s not re-litigate the finer points when the larger one was so categorically wrong.

And so my congratulations to Cody and the Alouettes. Glad we were able to put him on the map all those years ago as a backup QB in a blowout loss.

Of all my takes in nearly 15 years of sports-talk, did not see that one coming back to haunt.

I’ll wear the shame.

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