Taylor Shire
Regina Leader-Post
While Trevor Harris and Davis Alexander are set to go head-to-head on Sunday in the Grey Cup, it wasn’t long ago that the two were teammates.
In 2022, Harris — the current starting quarterback of the Saskatchewan Roughriders — was with the Montreal Alouettes where Alexander was a first-year quarterback straight out of college.
“He was very impressive,” Harris recalled this week in Winnipeg as his team gets set to face Alexander and the Alouettes at Princess Auto Stadium. “Through training camp, he was doing the right things, finding completions, and very strong arm and athletic and obviously he’s built like a brick hit house.
“He’s a great kid but he’s a very, very intense competitor. And you could see it through the pre-season games when we were losing in the fourth quarter and he went in and led game-winning drive for the first pre-season game; second game, game-winning drive for the pre-season game. And I was like, ‘OK, this kid’s got it.’
“Even just playing like mini-hoop basketball in the locker room, he was always competing super hard, and he’d get super upset if he’d lose.”
While it took a couple of seasons before CFL fans could see that competitiveness — as Alexander showed during his comeback victory over the Roughriders last year, which has kick-started a streak of 13 straight victories as a starter — Alexander remembers being a rookie trying to learn everything he could from Harris, who was the leader in the Als’ quarterback room alongside Dominique Davis after Vernon Adams Jr. was traded to B.C. midseason.
“The way I went about it, just being the third string and just learning so much is, I tried not to honestly ask too many questions,” said Alexander. “That’s like one of the most perfect guys you can role model your work ethic off of and that’s what I would say about him.
“The three quarterbacks, we’d be in the facility till about 6:30, 7:00 some nights; you know 13-, 14-hour days. And I was young and I was like, ‘Do I want to be here for 13, 14 hours?’ But of course, when you have a guy like him and a leader, you just kind of do what he says and or just follow him. He wasn’t forcing me to be there, but I just wanted to follow him. And he helped me with my work ethic and just helped me become a professional.”
While Alexander spent the 2022 and 2023 seasons as a depth player, seeing limited action in games near the end of each season, he finally got a chance to start games last season while Cody Fajardo was injured before signing a three-year extension and taking over the starting job this season.
Now he’s set to face one of his former mentors on Sunday with a championship on the line.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” said Alexander, who was a third-stringer on the Als’ 2023 Grey Cup-winning team. “I’m happy to go up against Trevor; somebody that I was able to sit behind for a year and learn from one of the greats, honestly.
“We’re both highly, highly competitive. We text each other all the time; maybe once every other week, or once a week.
“We love each other. We’re great friends, but ultimately, we’re here to compete against each other.”
Will text messages be shared this week leading up to Sunday’s game?
“No, probably not,” smirked Alexander. “Unless he wants to. I don’t care. I’m good either way.”
While the 39-year-old Harris, who has won two Grey Cups as a backup but is 0-1 as a starter, knows there’s mutual respect between the two, he isn’t about to let the 27-year-old take the spotlight this week.
“He definitely has done a tremendous job throughout his career so far,” said Harris. “And it’s going to be fun to be able to watch him when I’m done and be able to just kind of just continue watching him grow and develop in this league.
“But hopefully he gets his first Grey Cup after this year.”
