Quarterbacks, more than almost any other position in sports, tend to be the overachievers. They are the ones who study longer, think faster, and work harder than the average person. Elijah Barnes is no exception.
Barnes is the type of fanatic who obsesses over football even away from the field or weight room, having spent dozens of hours each of the last two offseasons painstakingly recreating all 27 U SPORTS teams in EA’s College Football 25 and 26.
That same attention to detail shows up on the field. Entering 2024 as a backup to Tristan Lefebvre — who threw for 2065 yards, 17 touchdowns, and just six interceptions a year prior — the expectation among most around the program was that Barnes would spend another season learning from the sidelines.
But a season-ending injury took down Lefebvre in Carleton’s Week 1 loss at Guelph, thrusting Barnes into the starting role. The Hamilton native showed out, eclipsing Lefebvre’s yardage mark and throwing for 14 touchdowns.
Unlike last year, training camp looms large in Ravens Land, and either could emerge as Corey Grant’s lead hand in a couple short weeks.
It's the unique situation that Ravens head coach Corey Grant finds himself in entering 2025. After all, most second-year quarterbacks who throw for 14 touchdowns and 275 yards per game would be guaranteed the starting job in their third season.
Both figures ranked third in the OUA last season, trailing only Taylor Elgersma and Evan Hillock (touchdowns), and Elgersma and Keagan Hall (passing). But this quarterback faces unusual competition in Lefebvre as he returns from injury.
"Honestly, I'm really looking forward to how camp's going to go,” Barnes said. “At the end of the day, nothing's my decision on how things move forward, but I'm looking forward to whatever happens," adding that he’s learned a lot from the veteran Lefebvre over the past two seasons.
However training camp plays out, and whichever of Barnes and Lefebvre is behind centre on Aug. 23 in Toronto, the Ravens are eager to prove that last year’s 2-6 was an aberration.
Objectively, Carleton was better than their record suggested, evidenced by a three-point loss to Windsor, a two-point loss to McMaster, and a three-point loss to Ottawa at the Panda Game.
While no one wants to dwell on those losses, he added, there’s value in learning from them and carrying a positive, forward-focused mindset into 2025. That means tuning out outside perceptions and focusing on improving internally to give themselves the best chance at becoming a winning team.
That push will have to be without Barnes’ favourite receiver, Second Team All-Canadian Kaseem Ferdinand. The son of late Alouettes fullback Denny Ferdinand (and brother of Ottawa defensive back Denny Jr.) followed in his father’s footsteps, earning a spot on Montreal’s practice squad in late July.
Ferdinand’s six receiving touchdowns led all Ravens, while his 645 yards placed second to Tristan Ready, a fourth-year who broke out in a big way and now becomes the unquestionable number one.
“Kaseem was one of the closest guys I got to know toward the end of last season — not just on the field, but in the locker room, too,” Barnes said.“We really grew into that QB1–WR1 relationship… him going to the Alouettes is an amazing opportunity for him, and everyone on the team knows he’s capable of going and being a baller in the CFL. Big crush to the team, he’s been a top guy for the last three or four years now.”
Despite the late-offseason departure of Ferdinand, Barnes is confident that Ready and the rest of the receiver room is ready to step up. “We also have to move forward without him, and I feel like we have the guys behind him to make that happen,” added Barnes.
Flip the play around
Being a left-handed quarterback comes with its own sort of challenges. So who does Barnes look to as inspiration?
“Funny enough, I haven’t really had much influence from other lefty quarterbacks,” he said. “The biggest one would probably be [Steve] ‘Grit’ Young, not even Michael Vick. My uncle’s a big 49ers fan, so when I started playing lefty, he’d always talk about ‘Grit’ Young whenever I was over at his house.”
Barnes’ biggest model is not a lefty, but rather former Packers and current Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Growing up a Packers fan, Barnes couldn’t get enough highlights of Rodgers on YouTube as a kid, soaking up in particular his sidearm throws and off-platform passes. “Trying to translate it into how I play, I feel, is definitely something I want to work towards,” added Barnes.
ridiculous touchdown heave down 11 with less than a minute left in last year’s Panda Game
“A lot of coaches didn’t really want to work with me [because I throw left-handed], they’d worked with lefties in the past, they were harder to work with,” said Barnes. “But me, understanding that, I was like ‘ok, listen,’ I can do anything a righty can do and more… and I told my coaches as soon as I came in here, ‘you can teach it righty and I’m going to flip it in my head and we can just move on.’”
Growing up, Barnes was also a talented baseball player, who says he could throw five pitches by the age of 15. “Everyone knew I could throw,” said Barnes.
The ‘Hammer’
Growing up in Hamilton, Barnes was immersed in a culture where sports run deep. Barnes describes the city as “driven” around athletes such as the Nurse family, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and the dozens of Canadian football players the city has produced.
Gilgeous-Alexander was honoured at a Tiger-Cats game
“It just makes me excited,” says Barnes. “You won’t [quite] see it with other athletes as big, but at the same time there’s still love and appreciation shown for all those Hamiltonian legends.
In high school, Barnes saw some of that firsthand, playing in high school for St. Thomas More, then the number one ranked football team in Canada. “Being in a big football city that is Hamilton, and hearing about all the stories about all these guys that came through before me, it felt like a big task at hand, going to that school especially.”
Though his junior season was disrupted by COVID, his senior year brought the full weight of expectation. “There’s a lot going into it because of how football-driven, especially high school sports and the division I played in,” said Barnes. “For some, it’s a tall task. But at the same time, it’s like if you love the sport enough, you understand that [passion] comes with it, especially in a city like Hamilton.”
Barnes says he has ‘The Hammer’ “in his blood,” adding that his Hamiltonian teammates still talk about those days. He adds that Grant actually went to the same high school as his mother. “We talk about it all the time,” says Barnes. “It just gives me chills talking about it, just how much growing up in that environment meant to me.”
‘The college football guy’
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Barnes began creating customized players in Madden, stacking the Green Bay Packers roster with him and his friends. When College Football 25 launched last summer, Barnes noticed the game lacked representation of smaller schools, and began to think abut the exclusion of Canadian programs.
Inspired by the return of team-building modes reminiscent of NCAA Football 13 and 14, he saw an opportunity. Barnes said he wasn’t doing much that summer besides training anyways, so he figured, ‘‘man, I could really [do this] if I put my foot down.” At his brother’s flag football tournament, he began building a couple OUA teams in the game and sharing them on TikTok, where one video eventually amassed over 100,000 views.
Encouraged by the positive response, Barnes expanded his project, painstakingly recreating every U SPORTS program. “It was a lot of work, but really fun,” he said. “At the end of games, or even during games, everyone’s like ‘oh, it’s the college football guy, where’s my overall.”
This year, Barnes took it further with College Football 26, updating rosters, ratings, and jerseys with even greater detail. “I’ve probably spent over 55 hours in the last month and a bit, just trying to work on that again, getting the jerseys right, getting the teams right, getting everything right like that, just to be able to provide for the community that loves playing football games,” said Barnes, noting he hadn’t quite finished updating all rosters and player statistics fully.
Barnes said a common question he’s asked is why he doesn’t get paid for his work. “I do it mainly for the exposure for the Canadian game,” said Barnes. “Let’s show people that we got something going on up here in Canada as well, then show people who probably weren’t aware of youth sports, football in Canada, that we got this up here.”Barnes noted it was amazing to see it all come together last year and have the ability to do it again this year, “with a little bit more.”
Barnes added the biggest change from College Football 25 was that he can now edit everyone’s overalls. “I think [Golden Hawks' receiver] Ethan Jordan’s the only 99 overall in the game right now, which is respectable, the only guy to have a 1,000-yard season in a while, right?”
For Elijah Barnes, football is more than just a game. It’s a relentless pursuit of growth, whether on the field, in the locker room, or even through hours spent meticulously crafting U SPORTS teams in a video game.
That drive, combined with his deep roots in Hamilton’s passionate sports culture, shapes the competitor and leader he is today.
As training camp approaches and the Ravens prepare to rewrite last year’s story, all eyes will be on Barnes and Lefebvre to see who will take the reins and try to lead Carleton back to contention.