Kayle Neis/Regina Leader-Post Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Trevor Harris (7) raises the Grey Cup at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building during the Official Championship Parade on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 in Regina.
Taylor Shire
Regina Leader-Post
Trevor Harris doesn’t know if this will be his last CFL season.
It might be. It also might not be.
After leading the Saskatchewan Roughriders to a Grey Cup championship in 2025, the veteran quarterback spent just a few days pondering his future before signing a one-year contract extension in early December.
Now, the 39-year-old Ohio native who will be 40 in May, is entering his 15th year in the league, and fourth with the Roughriders, with motivation to do it all over again.
“I’ve always said that the number where it says my age is not going to be what retires me,” Harris told the Leader-Post in a sit-down interview this week at Mosaic Stadium.
So, no farewell tour in 2026?
“I honestly don’t know,” said Harris, the 2025 Grey Cup MVP. “But no, that’s not my thing.
“I’m not going to, at the beginning of the year, say this is my last year … I just like to play ball and I like to treat every game like it’s our last because ultimately, it could be.
“I think I’ll probably know at some point during the season. But I don’t know that I’ll kind of say (publicly), I never would want to do that anyway because then I think it puts the attention on myself.”
After winning his first Grey Cup as a starter last year, Harris, who won two as a backup with Toronto (2012) and Ottawa (2016), said that while his teammates, family and faith motivate him the most, he also has a desire to chase that winning feeling once again.
“This off-season has been kind of strange, because I thought that maybe it’d be like, I take today (off), but I’m actually more hungry now, which has been really cool,” said Harris. “It’s almost like a shark tasting blood and you hunger for it more now.”
However, there was a time not too long ago when Harris thought he was done.
After suffering a tibial plateau fracture in his knee during the 2023 season, Harris returned in 2024 only to suffer an injury in his other knee, forcing him to miss seven weeks of the season.
When he returned, his knee wasn’t feeling as good as he would have liked, which forced him to doubt his future.
“I’m sitting there my house, I’m like, ‘What’s going on here? Is this proverbial age thing catching up to me?,’ ” said Harris, who was dealing with a partial ACL tear and an MCL tear. “There was a few times the night before games, I’d be like I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play.
“I couldn’t plant my leg in the ground. And I told my wife, I was like, ‘Hey, I think we can probably tell my parents (and) your parents, if they want to come up and watch, this is going to be the last one; this is going to be the last year.’
“I thought that was it. And I even thought about, ‘Do I go in and tell the coaches at some point?’ And I thought about it. But I was like, ‘I’m just going to wait and see how it feels.’”
Kayle Neis/Regina Leader-Post
Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Trevor Harris (7) walk off the field during the first half of CFL action at Mosaic Stadium on Sunday, June 23, 2024 in Regina.
While we know how the story ends, with a healthy and successful season in 2025, Harris did admit some of those conversations were had.
“I told my mom, and I told my wife, and she was like, ‘Let’s just wait,’” said the husband of Kalie and son of Tom and Suzanne. “Anybody that’s kind of aging will probably tell you during the season, at some point, you’re like, ‘This is it. I’m done after this year.’
“You probably say that every year, but I felt a little bit more serious about it then. It was probably a couple week stretch where I felt that way, and then it kind of just subsided. And I was like, ‘You know what? My wife’s right. Let’s just not make any rash decisions. Let me just make sure this is the right thing.’
“She’s wise beyond her years, and she knows me probably just as good, if not better than me, and so toward the back end of the year, I was like I think I want to keep doing this.”
As the knee continued to improve, Harris did have a stronger end to his season before entering the off-season as a pending free agent. During his year-end media availability, he said he didn’t know for sure that he was going to be back with the Green and White.
After time to reflect and some platelet-rich plasma injections which further improved his knee, Harris knew he wanted to come back.
“Toward the back end of the year, I started playing better and I was like I think I can rehab this thing,” said Harris. “And so I took a week after the season, and I was like, ‘Let me just see how this feels in a week and make sure that I could come back and be what I need to be for this franchise.’
“Because, as I’ve said before, if I can’t be a tier one quarterback in this league, I’m not going to do it, because I love this franchise, and I want it to be in a good place, and I don’t want to be the guy that comes in and has this farewell tour, and I’m shadow of what I was before.”
He opted to sign a one-year extension for the 2025 season, missing only one game due to a concussion, before hoisting the trophy at the end of the year, which led to another one-year extension this off-season.
“I honestly feel like I’m back to that place where I don’t know that there’s an end in sight,” said Harris, who threw for 4,549 yards in 2025, the second highest total of his career. “I’m just kind of just enjoying the moment, but I did think for a decent part of time during the ‘24 season that was going to be it.
“But I feel like I’ve found some things, whether supplement-wise, routine-wise, the way I’m training, that is kind of re-energized (me) and I just I feel better now than I did probably when I first signed here in ‘23, so I feel very encouraged.”
For Roughriders general manager Jeremy O’Day, while re-signing Harris after the season he had was a no-brainer, what does next season and beyond look like from his perspective?
“It’s probably similar to the last couple years where we’re just kind of taking it year-by-year,” said O’Day. “We haven’t had a conversation and said, ‘Trevor, is this your last year?’ Or we haven’t had a conversation saying that this is probably Trevor’s last year or anything like that.
“I think it’s just strictly based off of how the season goes and how he feels and how we feel, and certainly not something that we would discuss before the season or anything like that.
“You always have to be prepared for things that can happen,” continued O’Day. “If you look back at our history with even back in the days when Darian (Durant) was our quarterback, when your starting quarterback gets injured, you want to be in position that you have a guy that can step in and play and win games for you.
“And you don’t really know when it’s going to be the player’s last game too, right? Trevor’s not 30 years old, where you feel comfortable knowing that he’s going to be your quarterback for a long time. It’s more so just having comfort for that season knowing that we’ve got a really good quarterback that understands what our team’s about and prepares just like crazy to be successful.”
As one of the CFL’s most accurate passers of all-time, Harris showed no signs of slowing down last season and nearing 40, he’s altered his training regimen in recent years that has allowed him to feel “great” entering his 15th year in the league.
“The evolution of the way that I’ve trained and treated my body has been really, really neat,” said Harris. “Because when you’re younger, you just recover so quickly. You feel great when you wake up. And as you age, it’s a little bit different.
“The way that I physically have prepared has evolved as well in terms of slamming weights, sprinting, running, burying yourself into the ground, versus now preserving your joints, working smarter and harder, because there is a way to work harder and smarter.
“Once you’re 25- or 26-years-old, you’re not going to change a bunch physically. I am who I am on the field.
“Now, I can become sharper and more precise, but as soon as I stop getting better mentally, I’ll become a declining asset. And I just refuse to do that.”
In the end, until that love of the grind goes away, Harris will continue to put in the work mentally and physically to give his team the best chance to win and in this case, repeat.
“I think it just comes down to, I love it,” said Harris, who has played for four other teams over his career. “I think there will be a day when I don’t wake up and love the training, the plyometrics and agility. I’m going to be 40 this year. There will probably be a time where I don’t want to wake up and do the footwork drills and the box jumps and sprinting and those sorts of things.
“I’m sure that’ll probably get old, but I still love leading a team. I still love dissecting defences and being on time. When I’m stressed out, I know a lot of people go for a walk, I go and throw a football. It makes me feel good. It’s gratifying to kind of feel the ball come off your hand and throw a spiral.
“I don’t know that will ever leave, but I do think at some point I’ll feel the deterioration physically, and I’ll know it’s time. But I think that I just still love it. And shoot, if you still love it, and you’re still willing and able to put in the work, you figure, why not do it?”
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