Rookie QB ‘looks like he belongs’
Lloyd impresses Lions coaches with accurate arm and football smarts during pre-season debut
Ricky Lloyd was sitting at home on his parents’ couch in Northern California when he was recruited via Twitter to a school that’s most famous as the fictitious setting for the TV series Coach.
After starring at Minnesota State — actually it’s Minnesota State University, Mankato, but Hayden Fox (played by famously by Craig T. Nelson) coached at Minnesota State, so we’ll stick with that — Lloyd headed back to California and again waited for his phone to ring. This time his big break came in the form of a free agent camp put on by the B.C. Lions at El Camino Community College in Los Angeles, which led to another camp in San Jose a month later, and finally, the big time: an invitation to the Lions’ three-day mini-camp in Surrey that preceded their main training camp.
On Friday, Lloyd was scheduled to play a quarter against the Calgary Stampeders but ended up playing more than a half when Cody Fajardo, the Lions’ second-string QB, went down with an injury. The 25-year-old from Concord then stepped in, completed 15 of 23 passes for 121 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions.
Remember all this. It might be important one day.
“I’ve been waiting for a chance and I’m just exploiting an opportunity that was presented to me,” Lloyd said on Monday, back at the Lions’ camp in Kamloops. “I feel terrible that Cody was hurt. He’s been nothing but good for me. But I was the next man up and I did what I was supposed to do.”
And he opened some eyes along the way.
“You put the guys in the game and you see it’s either too big for them or they can play at that speed,” said Lions GM Ed Hervey, whose pursuit of Lloyd wasn’t as haphazard as it sounds. “The moment was there. He took it. It looked like he belonged.”
For one week. Now, the Lions are anxious to see if Lloyd belongs, period.
CFL pre-season games, by definition, are exercises in tedium, but they occasionally provide a moment for a long shot, and that was Lloyd on Friday night. With the Lions trailing 23-11, the 25-year-old threw touchdown passes on three consecutive series in the third quarter — two of the majors were set up by turnovers — to give the Lions the lead.
Early in the fourth quarter, Lloyd also faced a second-and-23 near midfield. Instead of forcing the ball downfield, he threw an eightyard completion to Samajie Grant which led to a Lions’ field goal. That play impressed head coach Wally Buono as much as the three touchdown passes.
“That field goal was big for us,” said Buono. “I thought he showed tremendous poise.”
Actually, he’s shown a lot of things in his eventful career. It’s just that a sense of timing hasn’t been one of them.
Lloyd was an all-everything quarterback at Concord, located just north of San Francisco, who was good enough to be recruited by Southern Mississippi, Brett Favre’s alma mater. He just wasn’t good enough to endure three coaching changes at Southern Miss and eventually returned to Concord after two seasons. There, he was alerted to a tweet from Minnesota State offensive coordinator Jason Eck (you only hope his nickname is Dauber), announcing the Mavericks were looking for a quarterback.
Lloyd responded. He made the trip out to Mankato, worked out for Eck and head coach Todd Huffner, and was offered a scholarship.
In his first year he led the Mavericks to an undefeated season and the NCAA Division II championship game. His next two years weren’t as productive, which helps explain why he wasn’t selected in the 2017 NFL draft. But he did pop up on the radar of Hervey and Lions’ director of player personnel Torey Hunter, who invited Lloyd to the Los Angeles free agent camp in March.
Geroy Simon was at that camp.
“You just had to watch him for five minutes to see he had something,” said Simon.
The Lions, in fact, were ready to sign Lloyd after the workout in L.A., but he asked to attend another camp in San Jose a month later.
“I wanted to show them (L.A.) wasn’t a one-day thing,” said Lloyd. “I can do this over and over.”
Hervey, for one, didn’t need convincing.
“He’s probably the most accurate of any of the quarterbacks we’ve seen,” said Hervey, who looked at a dozen pivots this off-season. “That includes our time in Edmonton.”
With the injury to Fajardo, Lloyd now finds himself as the Lions’ No. 2 quarterback, and will receive more playing time in Friday’s pre-season finale against Winnipeg at B.C. Place. He’s suddenly become an important player for the Lions, both now and in the future, which is heady stuff for someone who’s still trying to process the intricacies of the CFL game.
“The first couple of days of camp it was a little overwhelming,” he said. “It was a new game. The 12th man and all that motion screwed me up. I thought, ‘You’re not supposed to be able to do that.’ Now it’s starting to slow down.”
He was asked about Calgary and the two-plus quarters that may have changed his life.
“I was just trying to do my job, go through my reads, be smart with the football,” Lloyd said. “Honestly, it was fun. I was out there doing what I’ve been doing my whole life.”
Except Friday, he was finally doing it in the right place at the right time.