Saskatchewan Roughriders’ defensive back Jaxon Ford was forced to miss a large portion of the 2024 season with a broken bone in his wrist. But all that time off gave Ford an opportunity to see the defensive side of the game through a different lens. “Last year definitely helped me learn the defense from a different perspective. I wasn’t taking too many reps, so I was taking a lot of mental reps, and just asking and talking to the guys about it definitely helped, just a different perspective,” Ford told CTV News. A clean bill of health isn’t all that’s new about Ford in 2025, he also switched numbers, from 17 to 21. It was a three-way trade of numbers formulated by Ford and Riders’ quarterback Tommy Stevens. Stevens wanted 17 and Ford wanted 21, which was already slated to Nelson Lokombo. According to Ford, after several text messages to Lokombo from both Stevens and Ford, they finally wore him down and Lokombo agreed to switch to his current number 25. “A win for everyone,” Ford said. The defensive back now gets to wear the same number as his grandfather Al did back in his Riders playing days from 1965 to 1976. “It means a lot, not only to me but the whole family. I remember when I told him about it, he was very emotional, me too, so yeah it means a lot,” Ford said. Riders Head Coach Corey Mace said that if Ford’s stellar preseason performance was any indication of his play moving forward, the switch to number 21 should have happened earlier. “Yeah, I think we should have changed his number years ago. I didn’t [get] to watch Al out there, if he was anything like that, Jaxon looked like a different guy, and he had the sidelines going. He played really well,” Mace noted. “So really pleased with his effort and again he’s kind of set a new bar for himself and that’s the expectation that we all expect from him.” Ford registered four defensive tackles and two tackles for a loss in Saskatchewan’s first preseason game against Winnipeg last weekend and displayed a high level of physicality. “The new me, smarter, more aggressive – that’s how I would describe the new me for sure,” he said. Ford’s goals are team-oriented in 2025, and after watching from the sidelines as the Riders lost to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in last year’s western final – he wants to help Saskatchewan finish the job. “I think every year is important for me, but yeah this is an important year for us, for the franchise,” Ford explained. “We have to take that next step this year.”
