CFL season begins with unprecedented quarterback depth
Published
The strength of any football league is always rooted in the play and depth of its quarterbacks.
And while that’s mostly about the starters, if there is one thing Canadian Football League teams have come to understand in recent seasons it’s that almost every team is going to have more than one quarterback start a game.
That is why it’s worth noting the quality of QB depth charts across the CFL heading into the 2025 season, which exceeds any in recent memory.
Among the league’s nine expected starters are three former Most Outstanding Players in Zach Collaros, Bo Levi Mitchell and Chad Kelly, who between them have won the award five times.
Another, Nathan Rourke, is a former Most Outstanding Canadian who might have been named the league’s top player in 2022 had he not missed significant time due to an injury.
Elsewhere, there are veteran starters in Saskatchewan’s Trevor Harris and Calgary’s Vernon Adams. In Ottawa, Dru Brown’s first season as a full-time starter in 2024 saw him throw for nearly 4,000 yards, with nearly twice as many touchdown passes as interceptions.
Two quarterbacks – Edmonton’s Tre Ford and Montreal’s Davis Alexander – will make their debuts as starters following three years as backups seeing spot duty. Both are in their age-27 season and both were anointed starters during the off-season because their teams believe they can no longer justify keeping their skills on the bench.
The starting class is a good mix of experience and upside, with the average age of a No. 1 quarterback to begin this season just a shade over 30.
But the real strength of this quarterback class may in fact be its depth, with eight players slated to be backups (excluding Calgary’s P. J. Walker who is new to the CFL) having collectively thrown for 83,042 yards and 404 touchdowns.
That matters in a league coming off a 2024 season where every team started more than one quarterback. As recently as 2019, the nine quarterbacks who began the year as backups collectively threw more touchdowns on the season than those who started opening week.
Put bluntly, backup quarterbacks matter a lot in the CFL.
This season, five of the league’s nine backups are former starters – Montreal’s McLeod Bethel-Thompson, Edmonton’s Cody Fajardo, BC’s Jeremiah Masoli, Saskatchewan’s Jake Maier and Toronto’s Nick Arbuckle, fresh off his Most Valuable Player performance in the Grey Cup subbing for an injured Kelly.
In fact, three of those five have started Grey Cup games, and Fajardo is a former West Division nominee for Most Outstanding Player and a serious contender for that award most of last season.
And then there is Calgary backup Walker who arrives in the CFL with 21 games of NFL experience under his belt, one of two backup quarterbacks with NFL game experience, alongside Winnipeg’s Chris Streveler.
The outlook is a far cry from not so long ago, when many unseasoned backups had to handle starting assignments, with predictable results.
The reasons are mostly cyclical, the product of a new crop of younger quarterbacks being ready to become starters before the older guard is ready hang them up.
The cycle will eventually work in reverse, with Mitchell, Collaros, Harris, Masoli and Bethel-Thompson all 35 or older, signalling that teams best not rest and keep developing the next crop behind them.
That may or not include recent Canadian draft picks Kurtis Rourke and Taylor Elgersma, both of whom have opportunities in the NFL with San Francsico and Green Bay, respectively.
But at this moment in time, the CFL and its teams can enjoy spoils at the football’s most important position. The game should be better for it.
One-Two punches at quarterback ahead of the 2024 season
Hamilton: Bo Levi Mitchell, Taylor Powell
Ottawa: Dru Brown, Matthew Schiltz
Toronto: Chad Kelly, Nick Arbuckle
Montreal: Davis Alexander, McLeod Bethel-Thompson
Winnipeg: Zach Collaros, Chris Streveler
Calgary: Vernon Adams, P.J. Walker
Saskatchewan: Trevor Harris, Jake Maier
BC: Nathan Rourke, Jeremiah Masoli
Edmonton: Tre Ford, Cody Fajardo