Jason Maas, Cody Fajardo vow Montreal’s pass protection will improve after six-sack night

Photo courtesy: David Kirouac/CFL.ca

The Montreal Alouettes defeated the Ottawa Redblacks 19-12 in front of over 20,000 fans at Percival Molson Stadium on Saturday night but it was far from a perfect performance for the home side.

While the Alouettes’ offence struck quickly, scoring on their opening possession, they also dealt with issues in pass protection as new franchise quarterback Cody Fajardo was sacked six times.

“Obviously, if your quarterback gets hit like (Fajardo) did all night, there’s going to be concerns but that’s not something that I think is going to continue,” head coach Jason Maas said postgame.

Maas and Fajardo were both with the Saskatchewan Roughriders when the team gave up a league-high 77 sacks in 2022. Many of those sacks were taken by Fajardo and it was one of the reasons both the player and coach went looking for new homes in 2023.

“We’ll look at it, we’ll get better, we’ll address it. That’s not something, even in camp, we felt like that’s been an issue but that’s why you play games, to figure it out. We will figure it out and then move on from that,” Maas said.

“Protecting our quarterback is the first thing we think about every day so you know we’ll be better at that for sure and that’s on us as coaches to make sure that happens.”

Five different Redblacks’ defenders notched sacks on Saturday night, with two coming from second-year strong-side linebacker Douglas Coleman.

“We had some (missed assignments) but it’s our first week. We’re going to get better from there,” Fajardo told the media after the game. “When we look back at it nobody’s going to talk about the score, they’re just going to see how many wins and losses we got and this is a big way to get us momentum.”

The Alouettes have a bye next week and will travel to Hamilton to take on the Tiger-Cats on Friday, June 23 at Tim Hortons Field.