Although the Saskatchewan Roughriders have just added 10,380 career rushing yards to the running backs room, the major on-field gains will be left to others — principally A.J. Ouellette.
Ouellette, who is preparing for his second season with the Green and White, applauds the recent addition of Running Backs Coach Andrew Harris.
Harris, who played in the CFL from 2010 to 2023, was a backfield cohort of Ouellette’s for two years with the Toronto Argonauts.
In addition to being a factor on the field with Toronto, Harris was an unofficial player-coach during the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
“His knowledge of the game blew me away,” Ouellette recalled on Wednesday. “His mentality on the way the game should be played is exactly how I thought it should be played, so we kind of hit it off right away.”
Ouellette was the East Division’s All-CFL running back during both of Harris’s seasons in Toronto.
After signing with Saskatchewan as a free agent in 2024, Ouellette rushed for 550 yards in eight regular-season games.
Because Ouellette was nursing a leg injury, precautions were taken to ensure he was available and as healthy as possible for the playoffs.
The blueprint was a success. Over two post-season games, he rushed for 121 yards (averaging five yards per carry) and three touchdowns — one of which was a 30-yarder in the Western Semi-Final.
Early in the off-season, Ouellette concentrated on physiotherapy and massage therapy before shifting the emphasis to a customarily gruelling regimen that consists of football movements and traditional workouts.
There has, however, been one change of note.
“A.J. is such a hard worker but, at this point of his career, he’s got to make sure it’s conducive to him being as healthy as possible and trying to avoid some things.”
That message was quickly taken to heart.
“We had that talk in our exit meeting before I left to come back home,” said Ouellette, 29, who hails from Covington, Ohio. “I’ve got to listen a little bit to the guys who have been in my shoes before.
“Training as hard as I’ve been doing has gotten me this far, so in my head, I was, ‘I’ve always got to be the guy outworking everyone and lift the most.’ That’s how I’ve always done my off-seasons — making sure no one’s outworking me.
“Talking to some of these coaches who have played and have seen the end of their career, they know how that body feels toward the end. I’m about halfway through my professional career, I would like to say, so I can start making some changes.”
The newly appointed running backs coach has another change in mind — an idea Ouellette has embraced.
“One of the things I was talking to A.J. about is that he is obviously very physically gifted,” Harris said. “He works hard at being as strong as possible. I’m challenging him now to kind of focus on being as dynamic and mobile as possible.
“I don’t think he can get any stronger, quite honestly, and he doesn’t need to be any stronger. If you can squat 700 pounds, I don’t think there’s another player in the league who can even get close to that.
“He’s already the best at that and the strongest at that, so let’s try to challenge him now to be a little more mobile, dynamic. I think that will bode well for his longevity and help him break more tackles, because he’ll be able to bounce off and have more balance with his body built to contort and move in different ways that he wasn’t able to.
“That’s my challenge to him. A.J.’s a very smart player. He studies hard. He sees the holes well. He reads defences well. Just working within that, on top of this mobility piece now, I think we’re going to see some great things from A.J. and all the backs this year.”
Ouellette shares that optimism, which extends to the team as a whole.
“We just want to keep the fan engagement growing,” he said. “We want to build on the excitement that we had last season and the way the fans saw the team rally toward the end of the year.
“It’s just a bunch of guys who love working together and love working for that coaching staff.”
