CFL 2026 Half Term Report: Grading Every Team

By Chris Lawton

Nine weeks and ten rounds down, and the 2026 CFL season has hit its halfway point. With most of the league now sitting on eight or nine games out of eighteen, it feels like the right moment to pull up a chair, mark some homework and hand out a few report cards. Letter grades are also included. Some teams have sprinted out of the gates. Some are already writing off the year. And a handful of individuals have completely rewritten what we expected of them, for better and for worse. Obviously, this is completely subjective and my opinion only, so take it with a proverbial pinch of salt.

Let’s go division by division, team by team, and pick out one player who’s overperformed and one who’s fallen short of what we all expected in June.

East Division

Montreal Alouettes (8-1) - Grade: A+

There isn’t much left to say about Montreal that hasn’t already been said. They’re 8-1, they’ve won six straight heading into their bye, and they just went into Edmonton, the league’s best defence, and hung 48 points on them while missing four regular starters on their own defensive line. This is a team playing at a level nobody else in the league is close to matching.

Overperformer: Davis Alexander. The frontrunner for Most Outstanding Player at the season’s halfway point, and deservedly so. Alexander is completing 72.3 per cent of his passes for 3,140 yards, 18 touchdowns and just two interceptions, pushing the ball further downfield than any other starter in the league while somehow throwing the fewest picks. He’s on a pace that could genuinely trouble Doug Flutie’s all-time single-season passing record. Left tackle Nick Callender has been just as vital, more quietly, yet has allowed only a solitary sack all season and is protecting Alexander’s blind side about as well as it can be protected. Then there’s Tyson Philpot, who at 74 catches for 1,154 yards and seven touchdowns through nine games is on pace to break Allen Pitts’ 1994 single-season receiving record and is already threatening Terry Evanshen’s Canadian receiving mark from 1967.

Underperformer: hard to find one. If pushed, you’d point at the defence’s slow start to the year, but even that unit has been finding ways to win without some of its best pieces. Head coach Jason Maas handed play-calling duties to Anthony Calvillo this offseason, and the results speak for themselves. This is as complete a team as the league has right now.

Toronto Argonauts (4-4) - Grade: C

Toronto sit two games back of .500, and it feels like they should probably be a bit further along than that, given the talent on the roster. There’s been good, there’s been bad, and there’s been a lot of turnovers.

Overperformer: Janarion Grant. Special teams don’t always get their due, but Grant has been a genuine weapon for Toronto all year, and he’s now sitting second on the CFL’s all-time punt return touchdown list after adding another one in Week 10. In a season where the offence has been inconsistent, and the turnovers have piled up, Grant’s been the rare player who’s turned a broken play into three points, or seven, almost on demand.

Worth a mention: Shawn Lemon: Arriving mid-season, Lemon has been an instant jolt to Toronto’s pass rush, with three sacks in just his first two games in double blue.

Underperformer: Chad Kelly. The talent has never been the question with Kelly, but the turnovers have been a genuine problem. Including two separate four-interception outings already this season. He’d also missed time earlier in the year after a fine-worthy hit from BC’s Darnell Sankey left him with a neck injury, and his first game back off the bye in Week 10 summed up the wider issue: 349 yards and a score undone by four picks, one of them returned for a touchdown. Toronto need him to trust the offence around him rather than trying to force plays that aren’t there.

Hamilton Tiger-Cats (3-6) - Grade: D

This one is simple, and it isn’t really Hamilton’s fault. Bo Levi Mitchell was playing some of the best football of his career: 1,107 yards, nine touchdowns and just one interception through four games, before a broken ankle ended his season in Week 5. The Ticats have been trying to piece things together at quarterback ever since.

Overperformer: Larry Rountree III. With the passing game in flux, Rountree has quietly given Hamilton a reliable ground option, and the offensive line deserves credit for holding things together through a genuinely brutal run of injuries.

Underperformer: this is really about circumstance rather than a single player, but the quarterback room has struggled badly to replace Mitchell, and it’s dragged what looked like a genuine East contender back to the bottom half of the standings.

Ottawa REDBLACKS (0-8) - Grade: E

There’s no dressing this one up. Ottawa are winless at the halfway point; they’ve fired a defensive coordinator, released a veteran receiver and are already staring at a lost season. You could even argue that this Franchise is cursed right now!

Overperformer: Jake Maier. It says something about how bad things have been in Ottawa that their most encouraging player is a quarterback with a losing record for the year, but Maier has thrown for real yardage most weeks, 311 in Week 10’s loss to Saskatchewan among them, in a genuinely difficult situation with little protection and little talent around him.

Underperformer: the defence, as a collective. Conceding a league-worst rushing total most weeks and unable to get off the field on third down, Ottawa’s issues run right through the roster, and no single name captures it better than this unit.

West Division

Edmonton Elks (6-3) - Grade: B

Edmonton came into the year with genuine Grey Cup aspirations and, for the most part, have backed that up, boasting the league’s best defence for long stretches of the season. The Week 10 loss in Montreal was a reality check; their first shutout quarter of the season came in the third, but this remains a serious football team.

Overperformer: TJ Luther. As a rookie receiver, Luther arrived as one of the standout stories of the season league-wide, a fringe NFL journeyman who’d never dressed for a professional regular-season game before this year and is now up to 41 catches for 517 yards and three touchdowns, firmly in the mid-season rookie of the year conversation. Justin Rankin belongs here too. After a scorching start that had him on pace for a genuinely historic season, he’s cooled slightly but remains one of the most dangerous dual threats in the league, sitting near the top of the rushing charts while adding real production through the air.

Underperformer: the run defence in big moments. A team built around stopping the run had no answer for Travis Theis and Montreal’s ground game in Week 10, and it’s the kind of collapse that will worry Mark Kilam heading into the second half.

Saskatchewan Roughriders (6-2) - Grade: A-

Before anything else, it has to be said that this has been a season marked by real tragedy for Saskatchewan. Team captain Jayden Dalke was killed in a car accident in July, and the Riders have carried that loss with them through everything that’s followed. It’s not something a half-term report card can or should try to grade. It’s simply part of this team’s year.

On the field, the defending Grey Cup champions have weathered an injury list that would sink most teams and are still sitting at the top of the West. Losing Kian Schaffer-Baker, Samuel Emilus and Tevaughn Campbell inside a matter of days would break plenty of rosters. Saskatchewan just found the next man up and kept winning.

Overperformer: Trevor Harris. Quietly putting together one of the great late careers in CFL history, Harris passed 40,000 career yards in Week 10 and sits 13th all-time in touchdown passes, all while working through the most threadbare receiving corps he’s had in Regina. We already talked earlier this season about whether Harris gets the recognition he deserves here at Touchdown Towers CLF wing, and our stance hasn’t changed a bit as the season rolls on. Tommy Stevens deserves a mention too, his league-leading rushing touchdown tally now up to eleven for the year.

Underperformer: depth at receiver, out of necessity rather than talent. With so many bodies on the injured list, the drop-off from the first-choice group has been steep, though names like KeeSean Johnson have stepped up impressively given the circumstances.

Calgary Stampeders (4-5) - Grade: C+

Calgary have been one of the most watchable teams in the league and one of the most frustrating, capable of scoring 58 points in one outing and then finding a way to lose a game they controlled for long stretches, as happened in Toronto in Week 10. The talent is obviously there. The consistency isn’t yet.

Overperformer: Clarence Hicks. Calgary’s defensive line has quietly been one of the best units in the league, and Hicks is right at the centre of it, tied for the CFL sack lead and out in front of everyone else in pressures according to Pro Football Focus. Kick returner Tyreik McAllister deserves a mention too, leading the league in punt return yardage after a late arrival from the NFL. On offence, Dedrick Mills has been at it again, sitting near the top of the CFL’s rushing charts with three separate 100-yard efforts already, and Vernon Adams Jr’s stretch of throwing more than twenty touchdowns without an interception earlier in the year was one of the individual highlights of the season anywhere in the league.

Underperformer: game management in the fourth quarter. Between the holding penalty that wiped out a touchdown in Toronto and a fourth-down call that backfired late, Calgary have made things needlessly hard for themselves in tight games, and it’s cost them points they really should have banked.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers (4-4) - Grade: C-

A quarterback carousel that nobody saw coming has defined Winnipeg’s year so far. Zach Collaros was already struggling for form before a neck injury ended his season prematurely, and Dru Brown, acquired in a trade with Ottawa of all places, has stepped in and looked like a genuine CFL starter at times.

Overperformer: Dru Brown. Thrown into a difficult spot, Brown has completed passes at a high clip and given Winnipeg’s offence a jolt it badly needed, and there’s now a legitimate conversation about who should be under centre when Collaros is eligible to return. Brady Oliveira remains the league’s leading rusher and a constant thorn in every defence he faces. You could argue, though, that he is not overperforming; he is at the level people expect of him now.

Underperformer: the offence’s sense of identity. Even with Brown playing well, this group hasn’t looked like itself for long stretches of the year, and Brady Oliveira said as much himself midseason, admitting he didn’t know who this offence was supposed to be. Offensive coordinator Tommy Condell has struggled to put his finger on why, publicly. Zach Collaros’ own 2026 form only adds to the uncertainty; before the injury, his numbers- five touchdowns against three interceptions and a lot of hesitant, short throws- were a long way below the standard he set over the previous decade in Winnipeg.

BC Lions (3-5) - Grade: D+

BC have had about as unlucky a first half as anyone, with Nathan Rourke missing large chunks of the season and Chase Brice’s brief run at the job going badly before rookie Kaidon Salter offered a genuine spark in his absence. Rourke’s return in Week 10 wasn’t the polished homecoming some were expecting, rust is rust, but he still found a way to get BC over the line against Hamilton, and back-to-back wins heading into the second half at least give this team something to build from.

Overperformer: Zander Horvath. With the quarterback situation in flux for most of the year, Horvath has been the one constant, now up to ten touchdowns on the season and the driving force behind BC’s recent uptick in results. The low investment, high return he has given me on my fantasy team may have influenced me here too!

Underperformer: the passing game as a whole, out of circumstance more than talent. Between injuries and a rotating cast at quarterback, BC haven’t been able to find any rhythm through the air, and Rourke’s return will tell us a lot about how good this team can actually be over the second half.

Commissioner's Corner: How's Stewart Johnston Doing?

It feels worth a quick word on the man running the league, too, since his first full season in charge has been anything but quiet. Johnston’s biggest win by some distance is the new broadcast agreement with Bell Media, DAZN and YouTube starting in 2027, which the league is calling the largest media rights deal in its history and which finally gets the CFL properly into streaming. Although there are some fans not happy with this and not looking forward to any potential fragmented access to their team.

Where it gets messier is the rulebook. The field is shrinking to 100 yards and the end zones to 15, with the goalposts moving to the back from 2027, and the play clock and rouge have already changed this year. Johnston insists it’s all about trading field goals for touchdowns and making the game more watchable, but the reaction from the people who actually watch it has been lukewarm at best. An Angus Reid poll found roughly half of regular fans and three-quarters of hardcore fans didn’t like the changes; Nathan Rourke called them “garbage” the day they were announced, and Johnston has spent a fair bit of the year publicly pushing back on suggestions he’s “Americanizing” the league. He’s held his ground rather than reverse course, for better or worse. Even though the public have still not been shown any evidence that these decisions were based on.

He also owned up to fumbling the timing of last year’s salary cap announcement, which landed days into the free agency window rather than before it, and has promised not to repeat that mistake. On balance, it’s a mixed midterm report for the commissioner. Only time will tell if he will be viewed as a visionary (expansion would help here) or a vandal (if things have to go back due to backlash, or the game morphs into something more US-like). Call it a generous C-minus: strong on the business side, still building trust on everything else.

What Have We Learned?

Montreal looks like the class of the league by some distance, Saskatchewan’s depth is somehow holding up despite an injured list that reads like an All-Star roster, and Ottawa’s rebuild has a long way still to go. The East, beyond Montreal, is genuinely up for grabs, while the West is shaping up as the tightest, most competitive race the CFL has seen in years, with three or four teams capable of finishing anywhere from first to missing the playoffs entirely.

Nine games still to come for most of these sides. Ten for the rest. Plenty of time for a few more of these grades to change. That’s why they play the games. It’s going to be fun watching the rest of the season play out and comparing how things finish to how they sit now.

Until next time, 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

Rated 5 out of 5