CFL 'Quick Kicks' 2026: Week 15

By Chris Lawton

Welcome to week fifteen of our weekly review of each week of the 2026 CFL season. ‘Quick Kicks‘ brings you week-to-week news of how the games went, scores, surprises, and a general feel of ‘what we learned’ from the games.

This week the CFL did something it hadn’t done since all the way back in 1995, and the final season of the brief US expansion experiment: it crammed all four of its fixtures into a single day quadruple-header, kicking off from early afternoon in Toronto right through to the evening out on the West Coast. Back then there were thirteen teams in the league and presumably rather less choice about when anybody played anybody. In 2026, with a nice tidy nine-team, single-Saturday slate to play with, it felt like an odd call, and not one I’m convinced does the league many favours. Four intriguing games, three of them with genuine Grey Cup or draft-order stakes attached, all landing on top of one another rather than spread across the weekend the way, say, the CFL usually manages it, felt like a missed chance to keep the casual viewer tuning in from breakfast to bedtime rather than trying to watch a laptop, a phone and whatever the pub telly happened to have on all at once. Still, once the whistle went there was no faulting the football itself: a walk-off field goal, a genuinely historic losing streak, a defensive slugfest in Winnipeg, a Battle of Alberta blowout that clinched a playoff spot, and winning season for a team that hasn’t sniffed the latter since Barack Obama’s second term, and a proper ill-tempered West Coast rematch to finish. Kettle on, there’s a lot to get through.

The first game of the quadruple-header saw the Toronto Argonauts survive a real scare to see off the winless Ottawa REDBLACKS 26-23 at BMO Field, Lirim Hajrullahu drilling a 29-yard field goal as time expired to win it, his second walk-off winner in as many Septembers after doing something similar to Edmonton a year ago almost to the week. The scoreline flattered Toronto rather less than the underlying numbers might suggest; the Argos were 10.5-point favourites going in, finished with 277 more yards of net offence than Ottawa, and still needed the very last kick of the game to get it done, an uncomfortable habit for a team that hosts the surging Elks next week.

Chad Kelly threw two touchdowns but also two interceptions, both to King Ambers, and openly admitted afterwards that going 0-for-4 in the red zone in the first half was “terrible”, the sort of self-scouting report that tends to follow you round if you don’t fix it. Dave Ungerer III made sure Toronto didn’t need to sweat that admission too much, hauling in an 85-yard score among seven catches for 175 yards, his first century game since 2024, appropriately enough also against Ottawa. Ottawa, for their part, did rather more than make up the numbers, an 88-yard Kalil Pimpleton punt return setting up a tying field goal deep into the fourth quarter, but Ralph Holley’s sack of McLeod Bethel-Thompson on the ensuing REDBLACKS possession forced the punt that let Toronto drive back down for the winner.

The defeat extends Ottawa’s losing streak to eighteen games, equalling an entire CFL season’s worth of football without a win, and their current 0-12 start now sits alongside the 2003 Tiger-Cats, 1979 Roughriders and 1994 Shreveport Pirates among the worst season-opening runs in league history. Ryan Dinwiddie, who previously won two Grey Cups as head coach, hasn’t won a game himself in an entire calendar year. The only franchise to have lost more consecutively remains their own ancestors, the original Ottawa Rough Riders, who dropped twenty-five in a row between 1928 and 1932, which even by the standards of this column’s recurring Ottawa paragraph is a genuinely staggering piece of context to keep reaching for.

Player of the Game: Dave Ungerer III, WR, Toronto Argonauts. His first 100-yard game in two years arrived at just the moment Toronto’s offence needed someone else to step up. 7 catches, 175 yards, 1 touchdown, including an 85-yard catch-and-run.

The second game took us to a distinctly parky Princess Auto Stadium for the Banjo Bowl, where the Winnipeg Blue Bombers shut down the Saskatchewan Roughriders 19-6 in front of 32,343 hardy souls braving a wind chill of ten degrees. It was, by CFL standards, a defensive classic, Saskatchewan managing only 278 yards of net offence and next to nothing through the air, undone above all by the returning Redha Kramdi, back from injury and immediately making a nuisance of himself, punching the ball loose from D’Sean Mimbs in the first quarter and hauling in a tipped Trevor Harris pass later on to snuff out another Riders drive.

Winnipeg’s own night wasn’t without its alarms. Zach Collaros threw a lovely early touchdown to Tommy Nield off the back of an Oladipo Jr. drop that should have been an interception, but was sacked four times overall and left the game for good midway through the third quarter after helping make a tackle following his second pick of the day, the third straight year the Labour Day Classic-Banjo Bowl double has claimed him in some form. Dru Brown finished up without incident, and the Bombers’ offensive line will have some uncomfortable video to review, Stanley Bryant beaten again to push his league-worst total to nine sacks allowed on the season. What Winnipeg lost in the passing game they made up for on the ground, Brady Oliveira grinding out 100 yards to become the first Canadian in CFL history to open five straight seasons with a 1,000-yard campaign, edging out the likes of Jon Cornish and Normie Kwong in the process, and doing it while spinning off a would-be tackler on a busted third-quarter draw for good measure.

Winnipeg moves to 7-6 and, on point differential, still hold the head-to-head edge over Saskatchewan, who slip to 8-5 and now have both ends of this year’s rivalry set to stew over.

Player of the Game: Brady Oliveira, RB, Winnipeg Blue Bombers. A defence-carrying kind of night, and Oliveira duly carried the load, breaking new Canadian ground in the process. 14 carries, 100 yards, a fifth consecutive 1,000-yard season.

The third game was billed as the second instalment of the Battle of Alberta rematch, and turned instead into a rout, the Edmonton Elks putting 53 unanswered-feeling points on the Calgary Stampeders at Commonwealth Stadium to win 53-16 and, with it, clinch their first playoff berth since 2019. As well as being their first outright double digits in the win column, winning season since 2017. Cody Fajardo threw for 232 yards and three touchdowns, the Elks defence took the ball away five times, and Silas Hubert even got in on a blocked punt for good measure, the sort of complete performance that doesn’t leave much room for a losing side to point at as bad luck.

For Edmonton, the achievement carries a little extra weight given where this franchise has spent most of the last decade; their most recent playoff game came in that same 2019 season, and they haven’t hosted a postseason fixture since 2015, the same year they last won the Grey Cup. Calgary, meanwhile, arrive at the other end of this story rather more abruptly than anybody would have predicted a fortnight ago, having also collapsed from 18 points up against these same Elks in Week 14; two meetings, two games that got away from them in spectacular fashion, and a season that now needs some serious repair work with the West’s top two spots very much accounted for elsewhere.

Player of the Game: Cody Fajardo, QB, Edmonton Elks. Three touchdown passes and the calm head at the centre of a rout that clinched a playoff spot the Elks have waited seven years for. 232 passing yards, 3 touchdowns.

The final game of the week, and easily the spikiest, saw the BC Lions gain some swift revenge over the Montreal Alouettes, thumping the East leaders 48-29 at BC Place seven days after Montreal had ended BC’s five-game winning streak in the reverse fixture. Zander Horvath was the story on the field, three touchdowns taking his league-leading season tally to nineteen and putting him on pace to trouble Milt Stegall’s single-season record of twenty-four, while Nathan Rourke threw for 317 yards and ran for another score of his own, extending his personal record against the Als to four wins in five attempts.

It was, in truth, an ill-tempered evening as much as it was an entertaining one. Montreal’s Davis Alexander was left incandescent by a horse-collar tackle from Mathieu Betts late in the first half, telling reporters afterwards, not unreasonably, that “football is violent enough, it doesn’t need to be any extracurricular,” and Betts himself was eventually disqualified after a second major penalty. A separate skirmish over a Tyson Philpot late hit boiled over on the Montreal sideline in the third quarter, and to cap an unpleasant night for the visitors, returner DeVonte Dedmon was carted off after an awkward hit in the fourth, managing at least a wave to the crowd on his way down the tunnel. Casey Sayles’ pick-six of a falling-down Alexander pass and a blocked-then-recovered fumble return from Mustafa Johnson at the other end kept the turnover column busy throughout, in what was otherwise as spirited a piece of family entertainment as the CFL offers.

Montreal remains well clear atop the East at 10-3 and have long since locked up a playoff spot, but the manner of this defeat, and the fact they now sit 9-34-1 all-time in Vancouver, will have given Jason Maas plenty to chew over. BC move to 7-6 and level with Winnipeg for third out west, a game back of Saskatchewan, in what remains an outrageously tight scrap for playoff positioning heading into the season’s final stretch.

Player of the Game: Zander Horvath, RB, BC Lions. Three touchdowns and a share of the league scoring lead, delivered with a side order of BC finally getting one back on their East Division tormentors. 3 rushing touchdowns, 19 on the season.

State of Play

So that’s the quadruple-header filed away, four games, four fairly emphatic storylines, and not an awful lot of time to properly savour any of them before the next kickoff rolled around. Edmonton’s playoff clinch deserved a Saturday all to itself rather than a four-way split of attention with a walk-off field goal, a Banjo Bowl and a spot of handbags in Vancouver; there’s a reason the NFL guards its Sunday windows so jealously, and a league the size of the CFL, with nine cities each desperate for their own moment in the sun, would probably do well to remember it before reaching for the quadruple-header trick again.

Ottawa’s misery rolls on to eighteen straight, Winnipeg and Saskatchewan will meet again before the year’s out with a share of second place still up for grabs, and out west the Elks now look very much like the team to catch. The East, for now, remains Montreal’s to lose, chippy full-time whistle notwithstanding.

Next week there are only three games being played, and the one UK based fans should look out for is the visit of the 10-3 Edmonton Elks to the 7-6 Toronto Argonauts as that is kicking off at a very reasonable 8 PM UK time.

Until next week, CFL friends!

CHRIS LAWTON

CFL ANALYST

Chris originally started following the NFL with the ‘first wave’ of fans when it was shown on Channel 4 in the 1980’s. He has been a keen supporter of the Miami Dolphins since 1983. Chris first encountered the CFL in 2016 and instantly fell in love with the Canadian game. He has been writing about the CFL 2017. Chris has a degree in history, postgraduate degree in librarianship and can be found on twitter as @CFLfanUK

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