August 7, 2018

Football is helping Devin Gardner see the world

Devin Gardner’s quarterbacking resumé is as unorthodox as his uniform number.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ No. 98 spent two seasons in Japan’s X League before coming to the CFL this season.

“(That background) is definitely unique,” Gardner, who’s currently on the Roughriders’ practice roster, said before the team went on its bye week.

“I don’t know of any other quarterbacks who played in Japan and then got a chance to come to the CFL. I’m excited to be one of the trailblazers for that type of path.”

Gardner played 50 NCAA games with the University of Michigan Wolverines, completing 475 of 787 pass attempts for 6,336 yards with 44 touchdowns and 32 interceptions and rushing 342 times for 916 yards and 24 TDs. He also had 18 catches for 286 yards with four majors in part-time duty as a receiver.

During his junior season, Gardner was given the No. 98 jersey, a number that hadn’t been worn at Michigan since halfback Tom Harmon sported it in his Heisman Trophy-winning season of 1940.

In 2011, the Wolverines started assigning numbers of a few Michigan football legends to players chosen by the head coach — and Gardner was given No. 98 despite being a quarterback. That practice was halted in 2015.

After the 6-foot-4, 215-pound Gardner wasn’t selected in the 2015 NFL draft, he signed as a free agent with the New England Patriots.

The Patriots released him in May of 2015 and he was picked up by the Pittsburgh Steelers. But he was waived by the Steelers in August of that year and no other NFL teams signed him.

Enter the Nojima Sagamihara Rise. Gardner signed with the Rise — which plays in Japan’s X League — in July of 2016 in hopes of resurrecting his football career and perhaps getting back to the NFL.

“My agent called me and said, ‘There’s an opportunity for you to play in Japan. You’ll get a chance to travel the world,’ ” recalled Gardner, a 26-year-old product of Detroit. “I was like, ‘I’d enjoy something like that,’ so I went.

“It was my first time out of (the United States), but it was a good time.”

The X League uses the same rules as American college football. Each X League team can use up to four foreign-born players, but only two can be on the field at the same time.

In Gardner’s first season, the Rise deployed him at quarterback and one of his former teammates at Michigan, Jeremy Gallon, at receiver.

Gardner was named the league’s rookie of the year in 2016 after he passed for 1,429 yards with eight touchdowns and nine interceptions and rushed for 349 yards and six TDs in six regular-season games.

The following season, he was named the X League’s first-team all-star QB after leading the loop with 1,286 passing yards and 16 touchdown tosses and adding 425 yards rushing in six regular-season contests.

“It was awesome,” Gardner said of the experience. “The football was really good and (the homegrown members of the team) were good players. They play hard, just like everywhere else.”

Gardner also got the opportunity to experience Japan, from its landmarks to its culture to its food. He tried everything — but he didn’t necessarily enjoy everything.

“If I didn’t like it, I just didn’t eat it anymore,” Gardner said with a shrug. “It’s not like I was going to die from it.

“Natto (a soybean dish) is a thing they eat a lot and it’s one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever tasted in my life. It’s a running joke to them. They eat it, but they know that people from other countries won’t like it, so they say, ‘Hey, try this.’ Then they all get their cameras out because they know you’re going to spit it out. It’s terrible.”

Other than that, Gardner enjoyed everything about his two years in Japan. He returned to the States often during bye weeks — “I’ve got a lot of stamps on my passport,” he said with a grin — which helped keep him from missing North America too much.

“I enjoy different things, so I don’t get the homesick thing,” he said. “I’ve been at home a whole lot, so I think I can spend a few months or a year or two away from home.”

After returning from Japan after the 2017 season, Gardner started preparing for the 2018 campaign. In late June, he signed with the Roughriders who, at the time, were down to just two quarterbacks.

Zach Collaros had started the season as Saskatchewan’s No. 1 quarterback, but he left the team’s second regular-season game in the second quarter with head and neck issues. That left Brandon Bridge and David Watford as the Roughriders’ only pivots.

Gardner subsequently dressed for four games as the third quarterback, but he didn’t get on the field. When Collaros was added to the active roster for Thursday’s contest against the host Edmonton Eskimos, the Roughriders placed Gardner on the practice roster.

The CFL rookie successfully made a cultural adjustment when he played football in Japan. Back in North America, Gardner faced a different kind of acclimatization: The CFL’s three-down game is different than the four-down style played in the NCAA, the NFL and the X League.

“Football’s football,” Gardner said. “There are different variations, but once you put a football in your hands and there are guys running around, it’s football no matter what — and that’s what I enjoy.

“I’m picking up this game pretty well and I think I’m doing well.”