Ottawa RedBlacks: The Only Way Is Up

By Chris Lawton

Yazz and the Plastic Population spent the summer of 1988 at the top of the UK charts with a song that, to be fair, only ever had one idea. That same year in Ottawa, the Rough Riders were busy stumbling to a 2-16 finish in a campaign their marketing department had christened “Super Season ’88“. I mention it because the tune has been stuck in my head since Tuesday, when the REDBLACKS announced a new president, and because I can’t think of a better theme for a franchise sitting on one win from 17 games with one still to play.

When I last wrote about Ottawa in July, the REDBLACKS were 0-5; I called it the worst of times, and I honestly thought we were looking at the bottom. It turns out 0-5 was more of a landing on the way down. The good news, and there is some, is that the club has now hired someone whose entire job is to find the way back up.

Where We Left Things

A quick recap for anyone who has been looking away, which I would completely understand. In the half-term report I handed Ottawa an E grade at 0-8 and suggested the franchise might be cursed, and the season carried on regardless. By the middle of October, they were 0-16, the worst start in CFL history, on a 22-game losing streak that went all the way back to September 2025. That’s 406 days between wins at TD Place, which is more than long enough to forget where you parked.

The front office was coming apart at the same pace. President Adrian Sciarra left on August the 17th. Six days later, vice-president of football operations Shawn Burke was fired, having gone 21-60-1 over five seasons, and the day after that veteran executive Jim Popp arrived as a senior football adviser. Three major moves inside a week is more activity than most teams manage in a whole off-season.

Then Bryson Barnes Happened

And then, on Friday the 16th of October, the thing everyone had stopped expecting happened. Rookie quarterback Bryson Barnes made his first CFL start against Toronto and went 27-of-37 for 335 yards and two touchdowns, both to Ayden Eberhardt. Ottawa trailed 39-33 with 30 seconds left; Barnes found Eberhardt for a 24-yard score, and Paul Geelen’s convert made it 40-39 with six seconds on the clock. It was a proper CFL finish, and the 16,371 people at TD Place got to see all of it, which I suspect they’ll be mentioning for years.

Head coach Ryan Dinwiddie was a little defensive afterwards when asked why Barnes hadn’t been given a go sooner. I have a feeling that question is going to come round again over the winter, probably in several different outfits.

Barnes gets the final start of the year on Saturday in Hamilton, so by Saturday night the REDBLACKS will be either 1-17 or 2-16. If it’s the second one, that matches the 1988 Rough Riders and the 2014 inaugural REDBLACKS, and I never thought I’d type the words “2-16” and mean it as the good outcome.

Enter Mike Morreale

Mike Morreale is 55, from Hamilton, and played 12 CFL seasons at slotback with the Argonauts and the Tiger-Cats, winning Grey Cups with Toronto in 1996 and Hamilton in 1999. After he hung up the pads he spent years with the CFL Players’ Association, as marketing director and then president. In 2017, he co-founded the Canadian Elite Basketball League with Richard Petko, was its first commissioner until October 2025, and watched it grow to 10 teams with broadcast deals on several continents.

A basketball league is not the conventional route to running a football team, I’ll grant you. But someone who has built a league from nothing probably isn’t frightened by a blank sheet of paper, and OSEG has a very large one on the desk right now. There’s a neat bit of trivia too: the CEBL’s Ottawa BlackJacks play at TD Arena at Lansdowne, so he already knows the site, including where the tailgating used to be. Saturday’s finale is in Hamilton, his hometown and the club he spent eight of his 12 seasons with, so at least he likely has somewhere to stay.

The brief from OSEG president and CEO Mark Goudie is two jobs: build a football organisation capable of competing for championships, and reconnect the team with Ottawa. Goudie also said the fans have every right to expect more than they’ve been given, which is the sort of honesty that is much easier to deliver at 1-16 than at 8-10. That’s a concise brief. The detailed version will be a good deal longer.

The Dinwiddie Question

The OBJ report lists the to-do list as a review of football operations, a permanent leadership structure, a better way of identifying, recruiting and developing players, and a longer-term football and business plan. Morreale has told 3DownNation he’d like football operations settled by the end of November, and when asked about Dinwiddie’s future, his answer was that “there’s always a review”. I have never heard a sentence that could be read in so many directions at once.

It’s a complicated one to untangle, because Dinwiddie is head coach, general manager and offensive coordinator, one of only two people in the CFL holding the dual coach and GM job (Calgary’s Dave Dickenson is the other). He arrived last November with two Grey Cups as Toronto’s head coach and the 2023 coach of the year award on the CV, and admitted in August that this had been “more of a challenge than I anticipated”. I imagine he’s been working on that understatement all year.

There’s another name in the mix as well. 3DownNation reports that Henry Burris, who quarterbacked the 2016 Grey Cup winners, was a finalist for the president’s job, and Goudie says the door isn’t closed on a future role. So somewhere in Ottawa there’s a Grey Cup-winning quarterback on standby, which is more than the depth chart has managed lately.

The On-Field Job List

Where do you start? With the numbers, I suppose. Over 17 games, the REDBLACKS have scored 415 points and allowed 638, a points difference of minus 223. I have a history degree and a postgraduate qualification in librarianship, and neither of them could have prepared me for dealing with that. Back when they were 0-10, the defence was giving up more than 435 net yards a game, and that’s before anyone mentions the rushing defence I flagged at the half-term.

Then there’s the quarterback position, which has been a revolving door for most of the 2026 season. Dru Brown was traded to Winnipeg, where he has looked like a genuine CFL starter at times. Jake Maier got the job, McLeod Bethel-Thompson took over, and now a rookie with a grand total of 10 completions in his career before that Toronto game has the keys. One win is a sample size that would make a statistician laugh, but it’s a better sample than the previous sixteen.

And someone has to find the players. Popp’s focus, as the club described it in August, is finding American talent, and the whole recruiting and development process is on Morreale’s list. Quarterback, defence, personnel and a coaching structure that nobody can explain in one sentence. Nothing too ambitious.

Off The Field: Fewer Fans, Fewer Seats

The field is only half of it. Ottawa’s home attendance averaged 15,124 through the first five home games of 2026, down from 18,136 last season, which was already the second-lowest in the league. The fans I’d feel sorriest for are the ones like Robert Venasse, who has shared season tickets with 12 friends since the club returned in 2014 and says some of the group are questioning whether they’ll be back. Radio voice AJ Jakubec, who has called the games since day one, pointed out that the 2014 team at least had the novelty factor going for it. That is the problem with having a famous 2-16 in your own back catalogue: people remember it as the benchmark.

Then there’s the building. Sections K and L at TD Place aren’t available this season, and tailgating has been hit by construction at Lansdowne. After the 2027 season, the north stand comes down as part of Lansdowne 2.0, and capacity is reportedly dropping to 14,000 for 2028 and 2029. Which is one way to solve an empty seat problem: take away the seats.

Goudie told OBJ in June that rebuilding trust with the fan base would take five or six years. That was before the 0-16, so the clock may well have been reset. Five or six years is a long wait for supporters who have just sat through 406 days without a win, and nobody should pretend Morreale can fix it in a season. He’ll need patience from the fans and, probably more importantly, a lot of it from ownership.

So, Is The Only Way Up?

Mathematically, yes. The 0-18 that was a real possibility a few weeks ago is gone, so 1-17 is the floor. Historically, the franchise has done this before: that 2-16 in 2014 was followed by a 12-6 season and a Grey Cup appearance in 2015, as my table in July showed. In July I also said that misery in Ottawa has never been permanent. I’d like it noted that I didn’t expect to be tested on that inside the same calendar year.

I’ve been a Dolphins fan since 1983, so I do know a little about this. The 2007 Dolphins went 1-15, and the very next season they won the AFC East. It can happen; it just doesn’t feel like it can when you’re in the middle of it.

The next few weeks will tell us a lot. Morreale wants his football structure settled by the end of November; the free agency and draft calendar isn’t going to wait for anybody, and there’s a rookie quarterback who has made a promising start and a coach who has to answer a lot of questions. Whatever happens on Saturday, the REDBLACKS have at least picked someone who knows football, knows the CFL and has built something from nothing before.

Good luck in Hamilton on Saturday, Ottawa fans, and good luck with 2027. You’re due some.

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

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