EDMONTON – The belief is still strong inside the Elks locker room.

To a man, you won’t find anyone on the Green and Gold who believes the team’s 1-5 start was to be expected, but ask those same group of individuals and they are resolute in their ability to fight their way out of the hole they’ve found themselves in.

“This group is unshaken,” said Elks recently anointed number one quarterback Cody Fajardo. “We have a lot of great human beings in that room and a lot of great football players.”

“The message was simple. It’s one third of the season’s over. There’s nothing we can do about the past,” he added, “All we have right now is two thirds of the season ahead of us, 12 games. We have to take it one week at a time, one win at a time, grind through it. And then at the end of the day, we’re going to look up and see where we’re at in the standings.”

The faith inside the room was a point reiterated by Fajardo’s teammate in Mark Korte.

“I think it’s a very together group,” Korte said. “We know we’re a good team. The results haven’t been there, but we know that we’ve got good players, we’ve got good coaches, and a good process. So It’ll happen. There’s a lot of faith. Guys are still together, locker room’s in a really good spot. When you’re 1-5, that’s not always given, but that’s what we got right now.”

The Elks are coming off a promising showing in Saskatchewan against the CFL’s top-ranked Roughriders. The defence broke out with their strongest performance of the season, holding the CFL’s most accurate passer to his second lowest yardage total of the season and second lowest yards-per-attempt of the season. In addition, the 21 points allowed were the fewest given up by the Double E this season by a large margin, and the cleaning up of a few pass interference penalties could have kept that number even lower.

On offence, there was some good mixed in with the bad. Even with the limited practice reps, Fajardo was able to lead three drives of over 70 yards — due in part to his 26 of 33 passing performance for a season high 346 yards.

The biggest sign of improvement was in the possession battle. In 10 of the Roughriders 14 drives, the West Division leaders were held to one first down or fewer, and the time of possession was nearly split (29:56 Elks to 30:04 Roughriders). Where the Elks progress hit a stumbling block was when neither the offence and defence were on the field. Edmonton’s special teams took five penalties for 58 yards, including two no-yards penalties that would end up costing the team possession. Those were a few of the issues identified by Head Coach Mark Kilam, who continues to preach the togetherness that the Elks have exhibited behind closed doors.

“I think there was a lot of things to build on,” The Elks coach said. “It’s about cutting out that bad football so that we can take the next step as a football team.”

The next chance at redemption will be Saturday afternoon at Play Alberta Field. The Elks will be in tough with the East Division leading Hamilton Tiger-Cats coming to town. The Tabbies have followed a similar path to the Elks over the last two seasons, which the Elks hope to duplicate. Following a tough 2024 season that began with a winless start and ended with a late season resurgence, the Tiger-Cats started 2025 with a quick 0-2 start. Since then, the Steel City team have now followed it up with five consecutive victories.



Now the Green and Gold need to go on their own streak if they plan to stay relevant in the CFL playoff picture, but it all must start on Saturday against Hamilton.

“I think there’s a path for us,” Fajardo said. “We’ve got to get hot obviously, but there’s a path for us. By no means is this season over, and we’re not thinking about that. No matter what the media says, we’re not thinking about that in that locker room. We’re thinking about how we can win the next football game and you’ll see if we find a way to win a game, we’ll catch some momentum.”