EDMONTON – The Elks enter 2025 Training Camp with all the ingredients of a top tier offence, it’s just going to take time to build it.
The Green and Gold have returned many of the pieces that helped them pace Canadian Football in rush offence, while lighting up scoreboards for a West Division best 504 points (28.0 points-per game) in 2024. Quarterback Tre Ford will hold the reigns of the offence on day one, but with him in the backfield are the returning Justin Rankin and Javon Leake – along with their 1,779 yards and 13 touchdowns on offence.
In the trenches, West Division All-CFL lineman Martez Ivey and Mark Korte, along with the reliable Brett Boyko are back. They will be centred by a homecoming David Beard and his All-CFL pedigree — tasked with keeping Ford upright and allowing the dangerous duo of Elks running backs to keep churning up yards.
It’s the EE’s sensational stable of pass catchers where most of the new faces reside on the Elks offence. Kurleigh Gittens Jr. and his team leading 85 receptions remains, but a glut of new talent surrounds him with players like 2024 East Division All-CFLer Steven Dunbar Jr., 2023 West Division All-CFLer Alexander Hollins, and big-play Canadian Kaion Julien-Grant joining the fray.
The man tasked with putting this all together will be Assistant Head Coach & Offensive Coordinator Jordan Maksymic. The Sherwood Park product is back in the Green and Gold after spending the last four seasons in B.C. with the Lions. Maksymic’s pedigree is nearly unmatched among league OC’s. He is credited with helping development of Nathan Rourke and Vernon Adams as some of the CFL’s elite quarterbacks, and over his four previous seasons in Edmonton, the Double E eclipsed 5,000 yards passing in every season.
With all that said, after Day 1 of Training Camp, it was the defence who owned the day.
“Day one there was some good energy. We had some big installs last night and I thought guys handled the information,” Head Coach Mark Kilam said. “The defence was flying around. That’s usually the norm. It takes the offense a little bit to get timing and figure out spacing and those kind of things, but good energy and pretty good execution at practice”
For Tre Ford, who is expected to spearhead the EE’s new look offence, it was still a good first day inside the team’s new system.
“I thought practice was fantastic. I thought it’s been one of the better day ones that I’ve been a part of,” Ford said. “I thought we did a great job offensively with assignment and alignment. I thought we played fantastic. I think we have to work a little bit on the ball security. We had a couple little strips after plays, but it’s kind of hard finding that balance between when a play’s over or not in training camp.”
“I thought it was a pretty good day today.”
It’s a demand of the position that Ford bears the brunt of the pressure to learn the playbook and make sure everyone is on the same page come Week 1. However, he has some help with someone already fluent in Maksymic’s system in wide receiver Alexander Hollins. The 28-year-old played the last three seasons in the Elks OC’s offence, to a great level of success. Hollins racked up an impressive 2,110 and 15 touchdowns over the last two years in BC and will be a great mind for Ford to lean on as he works to download the EE’s new scheme.
“Having a guy who’s been in the offense is great,” Ford said. “I like it when receivers are able to talk and figure stuff out versus everybody trying to ask me and I’m like, ‘it’s my first year in the offense as well,’ right? When we have those experienced receivers that know what they’re doing, it definitely helps.”
Over the course of camp, the Elks will work on and off the field to forge this group of talented players and coordinators into an offence which can strike fear into opposing defensive coordinators. The three or so hours on field the fans can watch is just a glimpse at the work required to build a football team.
The average training camp day for a player runs from 6:30 am to 9:00 pm, but those hours spent installing, learning, and then implementing the offensive and defensive playbooks will hopefully pay dividends for the Elks come June 8’s Season Opener against the B.C. Lions.
“I think the off-field work is huge,” Kilam said. “There’s no other time of year where we spend more time in meetings, more time in walkthroughs, more time with drill work. That’s crucially important to how fast we’re going to start the season. They’re big volume, but they are critically important.”