Christian Bender/CFL.ca
Montreal Alouettes’ offensive lineman Kristian Matte thinks he knows why quarterback Cody Fajardo has really put his comeback season into gear of late, helping to power the Als into this Sunday’s 110th Grey Cup game against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
“Have you seen his moustache?” Matte asked, hinting that there may be some kind of quarterbacking super power in that new duster of Fajardo’s.
“It’s wicked cool, right?”
Personally? Yeah, I think Cody Fajardo’s moustache is wicked cool. And I guess he thought it was wicked cool, too, when a mentor of his grew a ‘stache during a previous playoff run, years ago.
“It’s something I saw Ricky Ray do,” said Fajardo, referring to his former teammate with the Toronto Argonauts. “Just trying to channel my inner Ricky Ray this year and sure enough, guess all it took was growin’ a moustache and here we are in the Grey Cup.”
Fajardo’s moustache may or may not have some mystical power to it. He’s been growing it and the Alouettes keep winning. I guess we’ll really believe in the power of the moustache if he goes lights out against the Bombers – a team he’s historically had trouble against – in the Grey Cup. What we do know for certain about that ‘stache is that Fajardo is getting ever more comfortable with it and that its genesis comes from the usual kind of team bonding exercises that we’ve grown accustomed to as sports fans.
110th GREY CUP
» Four storylines to watch in the 110th Grey Cup
» Head to Head: Who has the edge in the 110th Grey Cup
» Costabile: 5 Alouettes to watch in the 110th Grey Cup
Matte and the rest of the offensive linemen are in on the facial hair craze, and Fajardo says that illustrates a little something about the tight knitting that binds these Alouettes together.
“It just goes to show the locker room we have when guys haven’t had a moustache their entire life, guys have girlfriends or wives who don’t approve of it, and they (grow) it anyways. It goes to show the team camaraderie we have.”
If Fajardo is trying to channel, as he says, his inner Ricky Ray (though I believe a moustache would, technically, mean he’s channelling an outer Ricky), it comes with the approval of the man himself, apparently. More than that, really.
“After the semi-final game, he reached out to me and told me I look a lot like him with a moustache,” said Fajardo with a laugh, “throwing a wobbly touchdown.”
Aside from the Ray moustache, Fajardo is collecting wisdom from his former teammate, hoping to do everything that he can to ensure he manages his Grey Cup week as well as possible, in order to put him in a good position to compete on Sunday.
“I reached out to him, leading into this week, just for some advice. I’m not gonna share the advice with you guys.”
Beyond the secret pearls from Ray, Fajardo has also been in touch with his former BC Lions’ teammate, Travis Lulay.
“I wanted to just get some ideas from people I have a lot of respect for,” said Fajardo. “And they did not hold back. They told me pretty much their entire game plan of how they attacked the week. I’m gonna take some things from each one of ‘em and implement it into my own thing.”
Fajardo suffers no shortage of advice from retired quarterbacks who have “been there, done that.”
He has his head coach, Jason Maas, to lean on for that and he has Montreal’s offensive coordinator, the incomparable Anthony Calvillo – the last quarterback to lead Montreal to a Grey Cup win in 2010 – to rely on as well.
“Every single morning,” began Fajardo, “I go into the facility and AC’s there and I sit in his office and we watch film together. We talk about the plays that are going in. And so all that’s done before we get into our quarterback meeting, which is when Coach Maas is in there.”
“That’s the biggest thing that jumps off the page for me this year, is the amount of time I’ve spent with AC and the amount he’s made me a much better quarterback.”
“I’m just blessed with riches to have those guys in my corner,” he said.
In reaching this year’s Grey Cup, Fajardo has been able to put to rest the ghosts of two Western Finals in which he came oh so close to previously making the trip as a starting quarterback. In 2021, Fajardo and the Saskatchewan Roughriders were denied a comeback victory when a third down conversion was broken up inside the final minute. The season before that, a Fajardo pass doinked of the crossbar of the goal post when it looked like that throw was about to put the Riders within a point of forcing the game into overtime.
Both those games, of course, were against the Blue Bombers, who would go on to win the championship in each of those years.
“The way this season’s been shaping up and when Winnipeg won (the Western Final) it was exciting for me on a personal level because of the demons that I’ve had of going against a team like Winnipeg,” said Fajardo, asked whether just getting to the Grey Cup had exorcised the ghosts.
“Don’t get me wrong. They’re an incredibly talented football (team) and we’re gonna have to play our best football just to have a chance in that game and have the opportunity to kind of right some of those wrongs that I’ve had over the years.”
Fajardo is right in assuming his team will have to play its best football in order to lift that big, beautiful mug on Sunday. And that is probably the extent of the story.
Except that there is the possibility, isn’t there? That there is some kind of Ricky Ray mojo in that thing above Fajardo’s upper lip?
“At this point it feels good,” said Fajardo, noting that he had never before attempted to grow a moustache. “After the first game it felt a little different for me.”
“I think my wife has grown to start liking it,” he added. “At first, she was not a big fan of it.”
“But as we keep winning I think she starts to understand that there might be a little power to this moustache.”
