REGINA — Saskatchewan Roughriders' quarterback Trevor Harris isn’t one to rest on his laurels.
It would be easy for the 39-year-old, 13-year veteran of the Canadian Football League to simply sit back and relax after winning the Grey Cup last season, but that’s been anything but the case. Off-season workouts — both physical and mental — and plenty of preparation have gone into getting ready for the 2026 campaign, which is now only a few months away. All with the goal of doing everything possible to put together another winning run and bring another championship to Saskatchewan.
Harris stopped by The SportsCage booth at Canada’s Farm Show and spent some time chatting with Barney Shynkaruk and Don Hewitt about the off-season and the upcoming campaign, with one of the topics touching on coming into the new season as Grey Cup champions
“It's something that has been weighing on me,” Harris admitted. “Like now what are you going to do? I think that what it comes down to is you have events, responses and outcomes in your life, and it’s how are you going to respond? So that's kind of been my thing, for us to challenge each other this year."
“How high can we take this thing? How high can we push to the ceiling? Just how good can we be? We need to make sure we're staying on the gas pedal and that's one thing I'm not worried about because of who's guiding us.”
Harris’ dedication to getting ready for the upcoming campaign even extended into how he looked back on the previous one — he’d only watched the Riders Grey Cup victory a single time, in no small part due to his focus on reviewing the rest of the league to get a jump on 2026.
“When I got home, I took the first week-and-a-half off of watching film, then I got right to the West opponents,” Harris said, adding he has watched Montreal’s offence from the game twice. “I’ve been putting notes together, about four or five pages on each team… so it's on to the next. I hate to be anticlimactic, but that's it. I was like, cool, but it was encouraging because I was nervous that I was chasing this trophy my whole career.”
That, of course, is not to say he hasn’t enjoyed the championship off-season and what’s all come with it. One of the highlights has been the province-wide Grey Cup tour, which took Harris himself to La Loche and Buffalo Narrows in the northern part of the province. That was a special experience, especially to see how much folks in the communities love the Roughriders.
“It was kind of funny, you went to a high school and you asked, 'How many of you guys watched the Grey Cup?' Everybody's hand would go up,” Harris said. “They need to know that we care about those people up there as well. I mean, we're the Saskatchewan Roughriders, not the Regina Roughriders, we're a community team, but this whole province is in this together. We need them to know that we're their team as well and we have their backs. Getting to meet those people and learn about their culture is really cool.”
Being a Saskatchewan-wide team will also extend into the upcoming CFL pre-season, when the Riders play a preseason game against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Griffiths Stadium in Saskatoon on Saturday, May 23. That promises to be an exciting experience as 10,000-plus fans are expected to pack the University of Saskatchewan stadium for the first CFL game there since 1991.
“Whenever we go up there, you'll hear from the people up there how passionate they are,” Harris said. “They love the Roughriders and we love those people up there as well. I know there's the rivalry between Regina and Saskatoon, you hear (offensive coordinator Marc) Mueller talk about that all the time. They're great people up there and we couldn't be more happy to be able to bring the Grey Cup and do some things up there.”
Harris touched on plenty more in his time at the SportsCage booth — including his brief time as a youth football free safety — and you can check it all out in the video below.
