Jack Coan has spent three seasons preparing for Canadian Football League games he mostly watched from the sideline. On Saturday the Sayville quarterback gets the field. The Saskatchewan Roughriders announced that Coan will make his first CFL start when the Edmonton Elks visit Mosaic Stadium in Regina for the regular season finale, kicking off at 1 p.m. local time, 3 p.m. on Long Island.

The 106th quarterback in a line that starts in 1910

The team frames the moment with a number: Coan becomes the 106th starting quarterback in Roughriders history, a list that reaches back to the franchise's birth as the Regina Rugby Club in 1910. He also becomes the third Notre Dame quarterback to start for Saskatchewan, after Frank Tripucka in the 1950s and Tom Clements in 1979.

The opportunity comes because the Roughriders have already clinched their playoff spot and know they open the postseason on the road. Head coach Corey Mace is resting Trevor Harris, the 2025 Grey Cup MVP who leads the league with 5,370 passing yards and has thrown 32 touchdown passes this season, three shy of the franchise record Kent Austin set in 1992. Mace told reporters the decision felt right for the situation, and that Coan has earned the chance.

Earned is the operative word. Coan has dressed for all 17 of Saskatchewan's games this season and thrown exactly two passes, completing both, while Harris attempted the other 615. Around the building Coan is known as Little Trevor, a label Mace uses with affection: first into the facility in the morning, deep in film with the other quarterbacks until evening, three years spent inside Harris's hip pocket.

The Sayville part of the story

Long Island football fans do not need the introduction. At Sayville High School, Coan set Long Island career records for passing yards, 9,787, and touchdown passes, 128, while also rushing for 2,551 yards and 33 more scores. He was named New York's Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior, won the Hansen Award as Suffolk County's best player, and took the Boomer Esiason Award as the county's top quarterback three times.

From Sayville he went to Wisconsin, then transferred to Notre Dame, where his final college start was a 509-yard, five-touchdown performance against Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl on January 1, 2022. He started seven games for the XFL's San Antonio Brahmas in 2023, which stands as the last time he started a regular season football game at any professional level. He signed with Saskatchewan on March 15, 2024.

A habit of making finales count

Coan has made small history in each of the last two season finales. In 2024 he threw his first CFL touchdown pass, a 19-yarder to Jerreth Sterns against Calgary. In 2025 he ran for the Roughriders' final three touchdowns of the regular season. Saturday hands him a full game to work with for the first time.

There are stakes attached, just not for Coan's job. A Saskatchewan win sends the Roughriders to the Western Semi-Final against the B.C. Lions on October 31. A loss crosses them over to the East Division to face the Toronto Argonauts. Where Harris and the rest of the regulars fit into Saturday's plan is still being decided, but the opening snap belongs to the kid who once rewrote Long Island's passing records.

How to follow it

Kickoff is Saturday, October 24 at 3 p.m. Eastern time from Mosaic Stadium in Regina. The Roughriders' site carries the team's coverage, and the CFL's streaming platforms carry the league's final weekend of regular season games.

Sources