CFL 'Quick Kicks' 2026: Week 16

By Chris Lawton

Welcome to week sixteen 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.

Three games this week rather than four, with Saskatchewan, Winnipeg and BC all taking their bye and presumably watching from the sofa, and it turned out to be three games that between them covered pretty much every emotion English football fans associate with a midweek Championship fixture in February: a dominant home statement that turned into a nervy final quarter, a clinching win with an uncomfortable subplot, and a walk-off finish so cruel it ought to come with its own content warning. There was also, unfortunately, rather more discussion of groin punches than any CFL column really wants to be writing in September, a subject we’ll get to because it can’t sensibly be ignored. Pop the kettle on and crack out the chocolate digestives, there’s a lot to get through.

The first game of the week doubled up as the Canadian Football Hall of Fame Game, and the East-leading Montreal Alouettes made sure the occasion had the right result if not, in the end, quite the right final quarter, seeing off the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 37-25 at Tim Hortons Field to sweep the season series for the third time in four years. For the better part of three quarters this was as one-sided as the scoreline suggests, Montreal building a 34-3 lead with 13:22 to go and doing it with barely a hair out of place; RDS analyst Pierre Vercheval reportedly joked that the Als’ support staff must have slipped chamomile into the Gatorade, which is as good a description of a 31-point cushion built without ever looking rattled as you’ll find. Davis Alexander was almost surgical in the first half, going 15-of-17, and Hamilton’s Harrison Frost had the sort of evening every backup quarterback dreads, throwing four interceptions as part of a six-turnover night for the Tiger-Cats, the pick of them a fumble forced off Jake Dolegala on third-and-short that safety Nate Beauchemin scooped and ran back for a touchdown to make it 17-0.

Then, with the game long since decided, Montreal understandably eased off, and Hamilton’s fourth quarter alone would have made a perfectly watchable game in its own right: Frost found the end zone three times in the final period, via Kiondre Smith, Kurleigh Gittens Jr. and Keric Wheatfall, and dragged the final margin back to something respectable before two late interceptions in Montreal territory finally shut the door. It is genuinely one of the odder lines you’ll see this season, a team allowing 22 unanswered points and still cruising. However, on a short week, with a rested opponent and a three-score cushion, Jason Maas is unlikely to lose much sleep over it. For Hamilton, now losers of four straight and 4-10, the diagnosis remains the one 3DownNation have been writing since Bo Levi Mitchell went down: a roster that started the year with a legitimate Grey Cup argument has been let down by a quarterback room that simply hasn’t won its share of games, and the play-off math is now unforgiving enough that only a flawless final stretch keeps the season alive.

Player of the Game: Davis Alexander, QB, Montreal Alouettes. A near-flawless first half that put the game out of reach before it had really begun, extending his own personal unbeaten run against Hamilton in the process. 15-of-17 passing in the first half, two touchdowns, a fifth straight win over the Tiger-Cats. 21 of 27 for 218 yards, 2 touchdowns.

The second game was billed, in one of the more regrettable pieces of marketing this column has had to type out this season, as ”WWE Day” at BMO Field, and the Toronto Argonauts made sure their end of the entertainment package was a 24-19 win over the Edmonton Elks that punched their ticket back to the playoffs after finishing with five wins last year. Toronto’s defence, thumped for 42 points by this same Elks side back in August, produced the sort of complete reversal that head coach Mike Miller will want framed: Edmonton managed just one touchdown from six red-zone visits, Cody Fajardo threw two interceptions, and Tarvarus McFadden’s pick sealed it late. Chad Kelly threw for 373 yards and two touchdowns to go with his obligatory brace of interceptions, a habit that now has him level with Doug Flutie’s 1997 vintage for touchdown-and-pick excess among Argos quarterbacks; worth remembering, as 3DownNation helpfully pointed out, that Flutie’s version of that stat line ended with a Grey Cup, so Boatmen fans needn’t panic just yet. Ralph Holley scooped up a botched Edmonton snap and rumbled 55 yards for his first touchdown since high school, and Dymere Miller, filling in for two injured receivers, hauled in his first career score off a Kelly scramble that was, by any measure, the most ridiculous single play of the CFL weekend.

Now, the unavoidable bit. Both teams found room for a low blow on Saturday, Toronto’s Kevin Mital drawing an unnecessary roughness flag for one and Edmonton defensive back Chelen Garnes going a step further and getting himself ejected for the other, and it happened seven days after news broke that BC’s Josh Hagerty’s alleged groin punches on Montreal’s Liam Talbot in Vancouver had required emergency surgery and ended the rookie running back’s season, with the Alouettes describing the injury as life-altering. Mital, for what it’s worth, denied any intent afterwards, chalking his role up to a scramble on the ground rather than a deliberate shot, and there’s no suggestion these two incidents belong in the same conversation as what happened to Talbot. But two below-the-belt flags inside a single game, arriving in the same week the league is meant to be dealing with the fallout of a genuinely serious injury, is not the coincidence anyone wants, and “WWE Day” being the actual, sanctioned marketing tag for the fixture will not have aged well in the league office by Monday morning. Football is a collision sport; it doesn’t need any extracurricular.

Player of the Game: Ralph Holley, DL, Toronto Argonauts. A scoop-and-score off a botched Edmonton snap, his first touchdown since high school, and a fitting reward for a defensive performance that shut down the CFL’s most explosive offence. 55-yard fumble return touchdown.

The third game, and by some distance the cruellest, saw the Calgary Stampeders save their season with a 40-38 win over the Ottawa REDBLACKS at McMahon Stadium, Rene Paredes, forty-one years old and 251 games into his career, hitting a 62-yard field goal as time expired to complete a comeback from a two-point deficit. It’s the third-longest field goal in CFL history, five yards past the 41-year-old’s previous career best, which he’d only set earlier in the same game, and unofficially the longest walk-off winner the league has ever seen; Paredes said afterwards he “blacked out” celebrating and nearly took Vernon Adams Jr.’s knee out with his own discarded helmet, which feels about right for a kick that dramatic. Adams Jr. threw for over 350 yards and Calgary racked up 496 yards of offence at eight a play, a fairly emphatic response from a team that had lost four of its previous five and needed this one about as badly as a 5-8 side possibly can.

For Ottawa, there is a horrible symmetry to how this one unfolded. McLeod Bethel-Thompson, finally given his first start of the season in the team’s thirteenth game of the year, actually looked the part, throwing for 379 yards and five touchdowns and giving the Redblacks their best offensive showing in months; the defence, patched together with rookies and undermined by another week of injuries, simply couldn’t get a single meaningful stop when it mattered, conceding on six of Calgary’s seven second-half possessions. Head coach Ryan Dinwiddie also managed to compound matters with a bizarre third-and-ten call from the Calgary 11-yard line in the second quarter, turning the ball over on downs rather than taking three points because, by his own admission afterwards, he was still looking for a second-and-five call after mistakenly thinking he’d seen an offside flag. It’s the sort of story that would be funny if it happened to literally any other team in the league.

Which brings us to the number this column has been circling for a fortnight now. Ottawa’s defeat extends their overall losing streak to nineteen games across two seasons, a new all-time modern CFL record with the old mark, the Redblacks’ own eighteen, only set a week ago. More strikingly, this particular loss also means Ottawa’s current 0-13 start is now, on its own, the second-longest losing streak to open a season in CFL history, one behind the 1994 Shreveport Pirates’ mark of fourteen straight to begin their debut campaign, a franchise so chaotic it barely survived to a second season. Ottawa had gone into the weekend level with three other clubs at twelve straight defeats to open a year; they are now alone in second place on that particular table, and only need to lose at home to Calgary again next Saturday to draw level with a team that are long gone. Some records really are best left unchallenged.

Player of the Game: Rene Paredes, K, Calgary Stampeders. A 62-yard, game-as-time-expired field goal to save his team’s season, the longest walk-off winner in league history, delivered by a 41-year-old who’d broken his own career-long earlier in the same game. 4 of 4 on field goals, 8 for 8 on all scoring kicks. 16 points. 7 kickoffs for 414 yards at an average of 59.1 yards per kick.

The State of Play

So that’s Week 16 filed away, and while it was a lighter slate than usual, none of the three games lacked for storylines. Montreal remains out on their own in the East, needing just a handful of points to formally clinch top spot, while Toronto’s clinch, paired with Hamilton’s fourth straight defeat, has hardened the shape of the East into Montreal, Toronto and then a scrap for whatever’s left. Out west, Edmonton’s stumble in Toronto hasn’t cost them top spot, but it has kept the door ajar behind them, and Calgary’s walk-off win, painful as it was for Ottawa, at least keeps their own play-off pulse detectable for another week.

And then there’s Ottawa, for whom the only remaining question appears to be exactly how much CFL history they’re capable of rewriting before this is over. Nineteen straight losses overall, one shy of Shreveport’s all-time mark for the worst possible way to start a season, and a rematch with the very team that just ended their week awaiting them at home on Saturday. If there is a silver lining, it’s that McLeod Bethel-Thompson finally looks like a quarterback capable of giving this offence a pulse; whether it arrives in time to matter is, at this stage, very much an open question.

Back to the usual four games again next week, and the one to note for anyone in the UK is Calgary’s visit to Ottawa on Saturday 26th September, kicking off at a very civilised 8 PM UK time, for the rematch nobody in the nation’s capital will be looking forward to. Mindy you if their game is anywhere as good as this weeks’ the neutrals should love it!

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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