Their playoff hopes dashed last weekend, the Edmonton Elks head into their final game of the 2025 CFL season with one thing in mind: beat their provincial rivals and go into the off-season feeling better about themselves.<\/p>\n
The 7-10 Elks host the playoff-bound 10-7 Calgary Stampeders Friday evening looking to win the season series, having split their previous two games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWin the Battle of\u00a0Alberta, at home, in front of our fans, finish off the season the way we want to finish it,\u201d linebacker Joel Dublanko responded when asked what\u2019s the incentive heading into what seems like a meaningless game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fought so hard throughout the season. We\u2019re going to go out there and give it our best efforts and we\u2019re going out there to kick some butt.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Elks had their third straight disastrous start to the season at 1-6 before winning six of nine games to stay in the playoff hunt. That ended with their 37-24 loss to the B.C. Lions last Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom where we were to where we are now, we could really put a stamp on this season and feel really good about the way we finished,\u201d said quarterback Cody Fajardo. \u201cWe started 1-6 and were able to take it to two weeks left in the season with playoff implications.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re always playing for something, whether it\u2019s a cheque, whether it\u2019s your family, whether it\u2019s the organization, whether it\u2019s the fans \u2026 there are a lot of guys going into this game playing for contracts as well. I\u2019m on a one-year deal so I don\u2019t know what my future holds.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Elks lost four games by four points or less, including mid-season losses to Toronto Argonauts by one point and Hamilton Tiger Cats by two points, that ultimately determined their fate.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were too many games we just left slip away, the Toronto game, the Hamilton game,\u201d said linebacker Tyrell Ford. \u201cEven the first time we played (Saskatchewan Roughriders) I felt that game was winnable. We had a lot of winnable games that we ended up coming up short.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, Ford added, their incentive Friday evening is \u201cit\u2019s going to be our last game of the season with all the guys so go out and play for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time you win it\u2019s a good week so you definitely don\u2019t want to go into the off-season on a loss. Try to get that win, brighten up the season a little bit so the off-season won\u2019t be as painful. It will be painful watching playoff games, but a little less with a win at the end of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a four-game home winning streak the Elks want to extend. Offensive lineman David Beard said another win in front of home fans would help to\u201d bury some of the disappointment\u201d of missing the playoffs for a fifth straight year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a great kind of momentum shift going into the off-season,\u201d Beard said. \u201cWe want to go into the off-season feeling good about we\u2019ve accomplished. Regardless of the score Friday night, we\u2019re going to be proud of where we\u2019ve come from, but we want to make sure we put an extra stamp on that Friday night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Their playoff hopes dashed last weekend, the Edmonton Elks head into their final game of the 2025 CFL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-235910","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\/235910","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=235910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}