It has become the Edmonton Elks’ mantra this season \u2013 they just keep finding a way to win.<\/p>\n
After blowing a 17-point lead and trailing by a point midway through the fourth quarter, Edmonton quarterback Cody Fajardo found TJ Luther with an eight-yard touchdown pass with 53 seconds left as the Elks pulled out a 23-18 victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Thursday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not playing our best ball all throughout four quarters,” Fajardo said. “But what we are doing is we\u2019re playing our best ball at critical times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“And when you do that, you\u2019re going to win more games than you\u2019re going lose.”<\/p>\n
Fajardo completed 25 of 35 passes for 267 yards. Running back Justin Rankin rushed for 106 yards and one touchdown on 15 carries.<\/p>\n
\u201cCody was awesome on offence, man,\u201d Luther said. \u201cHe kept us all together, even when the crowd was loud and we couldn\u2019t hear anything. He kept us together until the end of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fajardo had led the Elks to victory over the Montreal Alouettes in overtime last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk about it all the time \u2013 finding ways to win and that\u2019s what Cody and the offence did when he needed it the most,\u201d said Elks head coach Mark Kilam. \u201cThey drove down and got points.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Elks have opened the season at 3-0 for the first time since 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody\u2019s messing with us,\u201d Luther said. \u201cI feel like we\u2019ve got the best team in the league. I just feel very confident in our team. We all play together and are very assignment-oriented.\u201d<\/p>\n
Backup quarterback Cole Snyder scored on a one-yard plunge. Vincent Blanchard kicked a 15-yard field goal and had two converts.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg quarterback Zach Collaros almost pulled off a comeback after falling behind 17-0 in the first half in front of a sellout crowd of 32,343 at Princess Auto Stadium.<\/p>\n
He completed 24 of 33 passes for 290 yards and had touchdown tosses of 26 yards to Tim White and 14 yards to Brady Oliveira.<\/p>\n
Sergio Castillo, who missed two field goals, did connect on a 53-yarder, kicked both converts and added a single.<\/p>\n
The Elks converted two of three Bomber fumbles into 10 points as they jumped out to a 17-0 lead midway through the second quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made way too many mistakes,\u201d said Oliveira, who rushed for 77 yards and added 45 yards and a TD on six catches. \u201cWhen we did turn it on a bit, it was too late.”<\/p>\n
Collaros was guilty of one of those giveaways.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t turn the ball over,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to play a clean game, stay on the football field.”<\/p>\n
Oliveira and Dante Daniels had the other fumbles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have turnover problems, that\u2019s the type of result you\u2019re going to get,\u201d said Bombers receiver Nic Demski. \u201cWe preach ball security and didn\u2019t take care of the ball the way we wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bombers also lost both receiver Ontaria Wilson and defensive lineman Jake Ceresna to injury. There was no update available during post-game interviews.<\/p>\n
The Elks did not panic after Winnipeg erased their 17-0 lead and went up 18-17.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t worried,\u201d Luther said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been in that position before, so we already knew what we had to do to get out of it and we just knew we had to lock in and focus on what our assignment was.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Elks are proving they are for real, Fajardo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a narrative about this organization over the last six years and all I want to do and what these guys want to do is change that narrative,\u201d he said. \u201cWe do that by starting 3-0.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe CFL is a long season. Just because you start 3-0 doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re going to keep winning. You\u2019re going to have your rough patches but when you have those rough patches, you\u2019ve got to find a way to persevere like we did tonight and find ways to win games.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has become the Edmonton Elks’ mantra this season \u2013 they just keep finding a way to win.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":761970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-761969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761969","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=761969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}