Saskatchewan Roughriders QB Trevor Harris locked in on 2026 season

The 2026 CFL season inches closer to getting underway and Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Trevor Harris is getting locked in for another challenge.

The team raised the Grey Cup in 2025 for just the fifth time in team history. Harris was named the game’s MVP for his performance in the championship contest with the Montreal Alouettes.

Read more:

• Riders’ football operations finalists for CFL’s inaugural Ted Goveia Award
• Tickets for Roughriders’ preseason game in Saskatoon go on sale on April 7
• Saskatchewan Roughriders announce more stops on Grey Cup championship tour

While Harris and other members of the Riders have been going around the province with the CFL championship trophy, the veteran quarterback believes the 2026 squad isn’t focusing on the past.

Harris joined The Green Zone on Wednesday to discuss a number of topics ahead of the CFL combine.

Listen to the full interview with Trevor Harris:

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

THE GREEN ZONE: What’s it like now that you’re back and touring this Grey Cup trophy around? Is it everything you imagined – celebrating a Grey Cup with Saskatchewan?

TREVOR HARRIS: It’s really cool, but I think it’s kind of funny how much on the same page the province is. Everybody I talked to is like, ‘Hey, great job. Do it again.’ As much as it’s like can we be happy for a minute, I’m on the same page. In my exit meeting with (head coach Corey) Mace, which was 48 hours after the Grey Cup had concluded, I’m sitting there with him and I was like, ‘Coach, I don’t mean to be cynical or whatever the word would be; I’m kind of over it.’ He said same. He said, ‘I just want to keep seeing how high we can raise the ceiling.’ We’ve been on kind of the same page for 48 hours. Not to be a Debbie Downer or whatever, but I was kind of just over it after 48 hours. I kind of just want to keep pressing and this team’s self-mastery piece has always been the thing that’s motivated me. I’m just excited to kind of see what it is again. It was kind of encouraging that I got over it that quickly, because I just like ball. I just like to play ball and I just love being a teammate and being a part of something bigger than myself. It’s kind of just been encouraging in a way.

Trevor, you mentioned Corey Mace and he is up for the Coach of the Year award. We will let you know what the protest plan is if he doesn’t win it.

HARRIS: It would be crazy. I don’t think we need to buy anything (for a protest). I think let’s just place the order, but get insurance on it. I don’t anticipate him not winning this thing, but you never know.

Let’s look ahead to 2026. This off-season, you did lose a few receivers but you have Sam Emilus and Kian Schaeffer-Baker and KeeSean Johnson, those guys are back. How do you feel overall about where this offence is?

HARRIS: Last year, we went into the season and the whispers in the locker room – and probably in the public too – was the main four receivers we’re expecting to hear from this year would be Dohnte (Meyers), KeeSean, Sam and Schaffer, right? I think people would attest to that and agree to that. We never had more than two of them healthy at the same time. So KeeSean, Sam and Schaeffer are all back. If we keep those guys healthy, you guys call me crazy. I think Dhel Duncan-Busby, Ajou Ajou, we’ve got guys who are really good football players. We have some really good young guys and CFL rookies that are coming in that have a lot of experience, that are really, really good football players that our brass is excited about. There’s going to be some heavy competition in there. I anticipate our receiving core gelling really, really well. I think we do a great job of communicating throughout camp. I think that’s something that really separated us last year was just our ability to communicate through plays and be able to take plays to the next level. It’s just a credit to (Marc) Mueller and how well he’s kind of allowed us to work together and make these things even better than what they are on paper. It’s been a really, really fun deal, and I look forward to this receiving core this year taking it to another level than even we were last year.

Is your offseason routine different from your in-season routine? Do you make adjustments through the course of the year based on things you learn about your body and how you’re aging?

HARRIS: There are more adjustments throughout the years than there would be during the year. Now, if I’m nicked up or have something small going on, my trainer and our strength coach here Dan Farthing, they’re just both very phenomenal. The machine that I work with, a direct current machine, it’s really been a game changer for me and I feel it has extended my career. I really feel like it’s something that has been great for me. I don’t really do any yoga. I don’t do a bunch of stretching. I stretch before I go to bed because static stretching will shut down your central nervous system. It’s more active warm up and making sure I’m cooling down, whether it be an Epsom salt bath or hot tub or a high-powered jet or massage gun, just those sorts of things. I try and just make sure that my flexibility is good throughout my dynamic warm-ups. Through the years, it can be difficult, especially if you get nicked up in certain areas but it’s something that you know, strength through length and full range of motion and mobility is something that I feel like once you lose, you start to age.

I really try to be the most cognizant of anything is having strength through the full range of motion and length of the muscle bellies and muscle groups and exercises that you’re kind of doing, whether it be full squats or lunges or Bulgarian deadlifts or whatever it is. My personal trainer has done a tremendous job of keeping me in line there.

How old were you when you figured that out? And how old would you wish you were when you figured that out?

HARRIS: I used to just crush myself every day on the weight room and just see how much I could handle. Then the next day, wake up and do it again. I kind of tweaked my back quite a bit and it didn’t go away for quite a while. That’s kind of the thing that kind of woke me up to this is how you could feel if you don’t feel healthy. When you’re younger, you nick something up or if you get too tired, you feel fine the next day because you just recover really well. Your recovery slows down as you age so you’ve got to be cognizant of making sure you’re not under-recovered. When you get a little bit of an injury and it doesn’t heal, that’s when you kind of become a little bit more cognizant of. I’ve tried to just make sure that I listen to my trainer in terms of the things that we’ve got going on with that. It sometimes takes a step back for you to kind of realize stuff. I used to just ignore the people who would tell me that. I’m was like, ‘Ah, whatever. These are just old people that don’t want to work hard,’ until it’s one of those things where you just learn as you grow.

The mini-camps and prep before the season, is it something you think should be brought back to the game?

HARRIS: I think it should be optional if the teams want to do it. I remember we did it my first couple years in the league, and it was nice for my first year to have a full understanding about it. But we have Zoom meetings now. Something the pandemic did do a good job for us was teach us that we can meet virtually. Guys are able to be introduced to the game early that don’t know the rules and whatnot. For me, I just get up here early. I get up here a week early and I get tons of work in before we start rookie mini camp. I do think it was beneficial for me early in my life, early in my career, but I’m not sure it’s 100% necessary.

Another big thing coming up are the rule changes. Of course, the play clock goes to 35 seconds. How much have you and Marc tried to wrap your head around what that will be in real time and what adjustments and what changes that might actually make for the Canadian Football League, and for quarterbacks and offensive coordinators to get calls in?

HARRIS: It’s going to be interesting. I think that Marc’s a little bit more worried, and deservedly so, than I am. I just look at it as we get an opportunity to have more plays. I think that if you kind of time the time between the plays, I think it is a little bit quicker, but it’ll allow us to get more plays in during the game which will be a lot of fun. There are certain loopholes that you can kind of milk a bunch of time off the clock by substituting and waiting on them to substitute and then you substitute. So we won’t really have that anymore. I don’t think this year is going to be that big of a difference other than CFL fans are going to get see more football.

Have you zeroed in on a motto for the season yet?

HARRIS: There’s no talk of repeat because what we did last year, we’re a new team now. Now, we have a standard and we’ve just got to meet that standard and how we’re going to respond to what just happened. We won the Grey Cup. Nobody cares about it this year. This is a new year and so how are we going to respond? I think we’ve got a team that’s just hungry to go play ball regardless of what the situation is.

We do have one retirement question for you. We heard how much you love the retirement question. When you do retire, you can only pick one postseason job – coach, broadcaster or Gainer the gopher fill-in?

HARRIS: I can tell you which one I rank third – Gainer the gopher fill-in. The costume kind of stinks sometimes. He comes up to hug me and just about knocked me out from time to time, but I think they’ve done a good job of washing that thing up and I think it’s good now. So that would be third, though, because I’m scarred for life from that.

So broadcaster or coach or other?

HARRIS: I want to be able to be present for my kids. If coaching takes away too much time of that, that would be tough for me because I want to be a great dad first and foremost. I do think that there is something to doing something that is ambitious and working very, very hard and setting a good example for your kids is to show hard work does pay off and working valiantly towards something has a lot of value in this life. The one thing I do want to instill in my kids, aside from my faith in Jesus Christ and following him, is a great work ethic and appreciation and love for other people. I think coaching does that, although when I was a kid, I used to set up like a table and a chair, and I’d put on these fake headphones and I’d pretend like I was broadcasting the game. I have wanted to be a broadcaster my whole life, so I kind will just see what opportunities kind of arise. It really would be fun to call games, because I’ve had a fun time talking through games with people throughout my whole life. I feel like I could add a lot of value there. But I think my heart is in coaching. So I’d probably say coaching first.