Eleven-year veteran celebrated milestone last week during Labour Day Classic rematch<\/p>\n
REGINA — Saskatchewan Roughriders’ offensive tackle Jermarcus Hardrick was a 21-year-old youngster one season removed from playing for the Utah Blaze in the Arena Football League when the B.C. Lions came calling midway through the 2014 season.<\/p>\n
The Blaze\u00a0needed an offensive lineman, and the six-foot-five, 311-pound University of Nebraska graduate and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints prospect most certainly fit the bill. Four days later, Hardrick was playing in his first Canadian Football League game. A week after that, he made his first CFL start. And now, 11 seasons and 150 games later, \u2018Yoshi\u2019 is still getting the job done.<\/p>\n
The Batesville, Miss. native\u00a0reached the impressive milestone in Week 14\u00a0when the Riders took a 21-13 victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Labour Day Classic rematch.\u00a0While that\u2019s naturally a cause for celebration, Hardrick was mostly taking it in stride.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, a little bit on the plane ride,\u201d he said about enjoying the moment. \u201cThought about it a little bit, but wanted that Banjo Bowl the most. Didn’t celebrate too much, but definitely called my wife. We had a little thing on the phone, but nothing crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
As one might expect, Hardrick was naturally thankful for the opportunity to have such a lengthy career.<\/p>\n
\u201cA\u00a0lot of people trusted me,\u201d he said. \u201cI got a lot of chances. A lot of people helped me, my family, coaches, players. I\u2019m still learning how to be a pro and a lot of people helped me be a pro for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the 2014 season with the Lions, Hardrick played eight games for the Riders in 2015 and then\u00a0played\u00a0seven seasons with Winnipeg. He again signed with Saskatchewan\u00a0in 2024 but only played five games last\u00a0season due to a\u00a0quad injury, but has been all systems go through the first 12 games in the 2025 campaign.<\/p>\n
Through it all, Hardrick has done his best to keep a low profile and remain humble\u00a0while letting his game do the talking for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cTough sport we play, you can get beat at any moment, so never get too high, never get too low,\u201d Hardrick said. \u201cDon’t give anybody bulletin board material. Why talk crazy in the media? Why give anything? Our job is already hard enough. Why put a target on your back?\u00a0Nobody cares about what happened Week 3, Week 4, Week 5,\u00a0we\u2019re in it for the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n
That attitude has worked and then some this season, which is quickly shaping up to be a special one.\u00a0While Hardrick was at home healing at this point last season when the Riders were going through a seven-game winless\u00a0skid, he\u2019s been around winning teams before and sees the similarities.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuys are playing for each other, guys are loving on each other, guys are having each other\u2019s back,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one’s gonna be perfect, no one’s gonna have a perfect game.<\/p>\n
“The defence is helping us when we need it, we’re helping them when they need it, special teams come when nothing\u2019s working. Guys having each other\u2019s back, that’s the biggest thing\u00a0and\u00a0on the sideline, no panic when anything happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saskatchewan can clinch a playoff spot with a win in Week 15,\u00a0but to Hardrick, it\u2019s\u00a0another game in the bigger scheme of things.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeans nothing to me,\u201d he said regarding\u00a0locking up a postseason berth. \u201cWhen we come back [from next week\u2019s bye] we still gotta work.\u00a0Still got Week 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and we still gotta work in the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk and Wes Cates bring you\u00a0the Rider Broadcast Network pre-game show at 2 p.m. on Saturday, followed by Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder with the game call at 5 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eleven-year veteran celebrated milestone last week during Labour Day Classic rematch REGINA — Saskatchewan Roughriders’ offensive tackle Jermarcus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-144772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}