The Edmonton Elks are doing something this city has not seen in a long time: stacking wins early and making it look sustainable.
At 6-1 to open the 2026 CFL season, Edmonton is off to its best start since the club began the 2019 campaign 6-3. This one feels even louder because of where it has the Elks sitting now - four points clear atop the West Division after a wild 36-34 victory over the defending Grey Cup champion Saskatchewan Roughriders.
That kind of opening matters in Edmonton because the recent history has been brutal. The Elks started 1-6 in 2025 before salvaging the year with a 6-5 finish to go 7-11.
In 2024, they dug themselves a 0-7 hole before closing 7-4. The three post-COVID seasons before that were even rougher, with the team finishing with four wins or fewer each time.
The low point came in 2023, when Edmonton opened 0-9 and stretched that skid into a 13-game losing streak that dated back to the previous season.
This year, though, the results have matched the energy. Cody Fajardo has already thrown for more than 2,200 yards and 10 touchdowns, while adding a rushing score.
Justin Rankin has powered the backfield with 561 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns. Austin Mack has been just as dangerous through the air, tying for the league lead in receiving touchdowns and piling up 579 receiving yards.
The defense has held up its end, too. Edmonton entered the Roughriders game allowing just 23 points per contest, and even after that 36-34 shootout, the number sits at 24.6 - still the league’s best mark by more than a point per game. The Elks also came into Week 8 giving up the second-fewest net offensive yards in the CFL.
And this isn’t just a hot start with no substance behind it. Edmonton already owns intra-divisional wins over Saskatchewan, Winnipeg and BC, which puts the club in position to chase its first postseason berth since 2019. That year, the Elks qualified in the crossover spot and beat the Montreal Alouettes in the East Semi-Final.
The comparison that keeps coming up in Edmonton is the 2016-17 Oilers, the last time this city watched a drought finally break. That team snapped an 11-year playoff absence by finishing with 103 points and second place in the Pacific Division.
At the time, it was the longest drought in the league. The Elks are now chasing a seven-year playoff absence that is the longest active one in the CFL.
There’s also a familiar shape to the way this season is unfolding. The Oilers didn’t exactly race out of the gate in 2016-17, but they were still better than the seasons that came before.
They went 14-10-3 through the first third of that campaign and 18-8-1 in the final third. In the two seasons before that, they had opened 10-15-2 in 2015-16 and 7-15-5 over the first 27 games of 2014-15.
The Elks know all too well how much a bad start can bury a season. Their finishes in 2023, 2024 and 2025 never fully escaped the damage done in the opening stretch.
Individually, the numbers are starting to get eye-catching. Fajardo is averaging about 327 passing yards per game, a pace that would put him near 6,000 yards and above 30 touchdowns if it holds. Rankin is sitting at roughly 80 rushing yards per game, which would put him on track for 1,500 yards and 15 rushing touchdowns.
For Edmonton, that’s the kind of production that turns a promising start into something much bigger. And with the second half of the season still ahead, the Elks are giving this city a very different kind of flashback.
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