Ajou Ajou was in seventh heaven after an impressive pre-season debut.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ seventh-round selection in the 2024 CFL Draft caught a team-best four passes for 62 yards in Monday’s 25-12 pre-season victory over the visiting Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Most memorably, Ajou was off to the races for a 38-yard touchdown after making a one-handed catch of a Shea Patterson pass.
After the game, the rookie receiver was asked whether being bypassed until the seventh round provides additional fuel during his first few weeks with the Corey Mace-coached Roughriders.
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Yes, it does!” Ajou said with a smile. “Of course it does, man!
“When I saw that FaceTime call from Coach Mace (on Draft day), I thought, ‘I already know what it is. Let’s work.’
“I’m just thankful for the opportunity.”
That opportunity is being seized, in the appraisal of the head coach.
“Ajou has been making phenomenal plays,” Mace said after Monday’s game. “If he can figure out what it looks like to be a pro — and he has been doing that since he has been to camp — man, what a steal of a draft pick.
“Ultimately, with the things he has been doing — catching the ball, tucking it and getting up the field, and blocking — he has been excellent to this point in camp.
“I was pleased to see the day that he had today.”
Patterson, for his part, was pleased to see the 6-foot-2, 211-pound Ajou as an inviting target downfield.
“You really can’t miss him,” Patterson said. “He’s a young guy and he’s got some stuff to learn, but if everything goes right for him, I think he’s going to be a very great player.”
That was the projection when Ajou was a highly touted recruit by the University of Clemson Tigers.
Over two years at Clemson, he dressed for 22 games (two of which he started) and caught eight passes for 114 yards and one touchdown.
He transferred to South Florida in 2022 and caught two passes for nine yards in his debut with the Bulls before suffering a groin injury and ultimately missing the remainder of the season.
In 2023, he enrolled at Garden City Community College in Kansas and caught 17 passes for 186 yards and two touchdowns in seven games.
Leading up to the 2024 Draft, the personable pass-catcher was projected to go as high as the third round. When he was still available in Round 7, the Roughriders quickly snapped him up.
From the outset of rookie camp, Ajou was conspicuous during workouts at Griffiths Stadium in Saskatoon.
He carried that momentum into Coors Light Roughriders Training Camp and, from there, into Monday’s game.
“My family was there watching,” said Ajou, was born in Calgary and raised in Brooks, Alta. “I had my big brother there and my mom.
“It meant a lot. That was my mom’s second time watching me play football.”
Her proud son put on quite a show — especially when he made the one-handed catch 12 yards downfield and sprinted the remaining 26 yards to Mosaic Stadium’s south end zone three plays into the third quarter.
“I saw a little open space and decided I was going to take it,” Ajou said. “The rest is history.”
