Saskatoon native and Edmonton Elks’\u00a0offensive lineman Brett Boyko stands\u00a0six-foot-seven and weighs 305 pounds. Growing up he had his sights set on playing a different position.<\/p>\n
“I say I’m a defensive guy, but quarterback was what I always wanted to play. I was bigger than everybody, so they put me on defence. When I got the opportunity to play quarterback, it was like:\u00a0‘I want to play quarterback and see if I can do it.’ I still wanted to play down south\u00a0and I put enough faith in myself that whatever I was going to do, I wanted to play pro football.\u00a0When I was going through the recruiting process, it was a lot of o-line talks. I was recruited as a big athlete, but I knew what was happening when I was going down there,” Boyko told\u00a0Justin Dunk from the Rider Broadcast Network.<\/p>\n
“It was\u00a0a challenge and an opportunity that I\u00a0put on myself\u00a0and I was like: ‘I’ll figure it out.’ I will say that in my first year at UNLV, I was the worst football player ever — I do stand by that. When I talk to people, I say\u00a0I was\u00a0a pretty good athlete, could do a lot of things, but when I switched to offensive line\u00a0I was terrible. It took some time and it worked out, but\u00a0it was a rough start.”<\/p>\n
Boyko’s post-secondary career was with the UNLV Rebels from 2011 to 2014.\u00a0He prided himself on his work ethic during that time, learning the offensive line position.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After Boyko’s time with the\u00a0Rebels,\u00a0he\u00a0signed with the Philadelphia Eagles and was on their practice roster for 2015 and part of\u00a02016. When his time with the Eagles concluded, he went to\u00a0the Los Angeles Chargers from 2016 to 2018.<\/p>\n
“I was able to bounce back and get an opportunity to sign with the Eagles\u00a0and Jeff Stoutland, o-line coach, was still there. Lane Johnson was\u00a0a mentor to me. While I was there,\u00a0I had Jason Kelce, Jason Peters. There’s a lot of like guys who really took me under their wing in terms of o-line play and you\u00a0see what they do,” Boyko said.<\/p>\n
“[They told] young guys all the time, find your routine, find someone, see what they do that they’re successful at and\u00a0mimic it. Understand the way they go about being a pro, that was my approach to everything.\u00a0I was fortunate to have those guys,\u00a0the amount of knowledge I’ve gained. Then you go from there to the Chargers where you’re playing with guys and quarterbacks like Philip Rivers,\u00a0you’re\u00a0seeing a whole new\u00a0perspective, it’s taught me so much along the way.”<\/p>\n
Boyko spent some time with the\u00a0San Diego Fleet in 2019. Eventually, he\u00a0made his trip up north and played with the B.C. Lions from 2019 to 2020, then later with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2021. He had\u00a0a stint with the XFL\u2019s Orlando Guardians in 2023 before returning to Canada to play for the Elks.<\/p>\n
“2018, tore the calf.\u00a02019, you got the knee and the ankle, you’re playing through, and you’re not putting out good film either. Trying to\u00a0survive at that point in 2020.\u00a0No season 2021 and\u00a0went through this weird illness. Overcame that all and you\u00a0want to keep playing, but at the same time, it\u00a0wasn’t in the cards. I stepped away and as the season continued, I started getting calls to come back. At that point, the decision was made,\u00a0then\u00a0got healthy again and the body started feeling good,” Boyko recalled.<\/p>\n
“You really miss the brotherhood. I will say that when you’re done playing football, I’m sure most guys would say that, the brotherhood and the locker room and all that stuff\u00a0it carries a weight\u00a0and so when you’re not around that, it does stink a little bit. Missing that, being healthy, my agent called me and said:\u00a0‘This XFL team wants you. Do you want to come do it?’\u00a0I said:\u00a0‘Sure.’\u00a0Got there on a Thursday, played\u00a070 snaps on a Saturday. Everything came back, including all the love. Once that season finished, I was like:\u00a0‘I got a lot more ball left.’\u00a0Let’s figure out an opportunity to come back up here,\u00a0I was glad\u00a0it was Edmonton\u00a0and it’s all worked out so far.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saskatoon native and Edmonton Elks’\u00a0offensive lineman Brett Boyko stands\u00a0six-foot-seven and weighs 305 pounds. Growing up he had his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,34002,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-49986","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-nflcflsaskatchewan-roughridersedmonton-elksbrett-boykojason-petersjason-kelcejeff-stoutlandlane-johnson","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49986","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=49986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}