It was never in doubt

This week, I'll be showcasing 2026 CFL milestones.

We start off with CFL records and historical firsts that were established (or extended).

Huge congratulations to these legends!

Tuesday - Franchise records broken by players

Wednesday - Team and league records broken by team

Thursday - personal bests and breakout seasons

posted with love. Giulio and the MOJ are the single greatest radio duo in the league right now. Fantastic chemistry and knowledge. Exceptional work. and he hates the command centre incase you missed that.

I realize somebody's podcast used this already within the past week, but as a fan of the novels I recognize that the permanence of statement. They may be leaving CFL fantasy. I'm going a bit further.

After nearly six decades as a CFL fan, I'm retiring.

The rules being introduced next year no longer suit my interest in the league. Maybe this old fart can't deal with the "modernized" rules, maybe I'm right and they are detrimental to the league.

Whatever the case may be, I'm done. Jock & Greg have said that as long as there are three downs, one yard off and full back-field motion, they are willing to give the rules a chance. While those are key components to the game, I have issues with the changes. The goal line is the goal line, both for running/passing plays as well as kicking plays. There hasn't been any dramatic injury due to the goal posts in years, nay decades. Centre field is the 55 yard line. The endzone is 20 yards deep. Touchdowns went up 14% this year without these rule changes. Don't even get me started with the playoff rules. Why even play a regular season if 89% of the teams get in.

So, it is one thing to complain about the rules; lord knows I done a lot of that. But complaining and continuing to support the league and teams even in the most minor of fashions is hypocritical at best. I will be taking my leave of the league. I will pay it no more attention. Not here, not on TSN, not in the news, not at the store, and not at the ticket booth.

Some may doubt my commitment, which is fine. I was done with the Flames over a decade ago. With a gun to my head, I could name but one current player; Dustin Wolf, but only because he played for the Wranglers, my team of choice. I have no idea where they are in the standings, but the scuttlebutt at work is they suck. I have no idea how they did the last game they played. I have less of an idea when they play next.

Firstly, I would like to thank you all here in r/CFL. You're all top notch. We may have disagreed about our teams, the league, marketing, TSN, etc. but this group of people made being a fan of the league that much better.

Secondly, I would like to thank the Stamps for not providing me any reason to regret my decision. Despite some excellent play by Vernon Adams and some wonderful meaningless stats, they were able to make 9-9 not enough to get into the playoffs. Somehow the 8-10 team turned that record into a Grey Cup Championship.

You won't see me around on Grey Cup week, less you are attending the Remembrance Day Ceremonies at the Museums of the Regiments. I'm not going to bother attending any events for the first time since we've hosted the big party. (I was only a wee child the first time we hosted, so I probably didn't participate much in 1975.) I will look out the window to get a peak of the Snowbirds in their final flight in that aircraft, but that's about Canadian history.

So, in the immortal words of the dolphins; So long and thanks for all the fish!

Get ready for more redblacks whining (atleast its the last time youll hear it this year😅). Its been a day now and honestly even the idea of the Redblacks stepping onto the field next week feels nauseating. But its thankfully(?) not so, everyone can just go home and kick up their legs cause after all they won a game right?

Well that doesnt take away the fact that this team is plastered in the record books and had been pretty crap to watch week in week out for over a year. I can repeat the same numbers about how Ottawa football has 3 winning seasons since 1980 or theyve barely crossed a 25% win rate in the last 8 years, yes we know they are futile. The fanbase has always known but theyve backed them still after 3 new franchises.

But I dont think even this city has hit quite this level of a low before. There is just no optimism or any reason to feel excited. Nobody of real substance is coming to this team next year. We already know that there is no shot theyll be any real threat to the league at all next year. I have just never seen a team so depleted of talent before.

I just hate it, totally and completely hate that there is no reason for any faith in this franchise just about ever. The rule and playoffs changes are one thing that I dont like but can give benefit of the doubt, however this team and this trajectory is wearing me down. Its the same old routine again and again every year. The weeks we always get forced to look forward to in ottawa are week 1 and then immediately week 21😂. It stays like this because nobody gets taken to task, the same people keep the same people around. Nobody ever answers why they let things stay this bad for so long. Nobody ever asks or answers the hard questions. The only answer has to be nobody cares. Im tired of it.

I have made a habit to go to 2-3 games a year since 2014 for the Redblacks but honestly its just depressing now. I sit in sections where I feel like theres maybe 3 people in our row and none make a peep. Its been that way for so long even I dont make one anymore. The stadium is a library every week, the team is down 3 possessions by the 3 minute mark of the first quarter and all the energy is sapped from the stadium which is getting ever more empty everytime I go there.

It just feels like football in Ottawa has been off life support for several years now. I don't know if as a fan if it is another year or so of that, than this may not be something I can sign up for anymore. Not even my life long fandom for the sport has stopped me from starting to get sick of this team. What a horrible season, couldn't even give me a darn parade. No joy to be found I tell you😂! Feels like next year is the breaking point this year probably was for a lot of fans. Dreading the crowd size next year already. I can only hope they will defy the odds and just be average. Please just be mediocre even!

Anyways, see you all next year! You guys in the game threads are about the only things left that keep a redblacks game half entertaining anymore😅.

Final Attendance Check.

A reminder that these figures are not including the home away from home games that BC/TO had earlier in the season.

If you account for those games in both 26 and 25 counts the overall attendance dropped by 1.6% with an avg. attendance of 22,570.

#CFL

A friend made this comment yesterday and I couldn’t help but share. This fact really highlights the absurdity of the playoff format change.

Has anyone seen this book from the 70s or know where I might be able to find it? My dad saw it at a store decades ago and never got it but talks about it all the time and regrets not buying it, so I thought it would be cool if I could find it for him.

Thanks!

Chad Kelly is reported asking for a million dollars a year on his next contract. Pushing the QB market to a new high.
We have seen before how over spending at QB affects the quality of the team and league.
I would like to see the CFL implement a rule that no one player can be paid more than 10% of the salary cap.
The cap is now 6.2 million. A QB could still earn $620,000, more than most of the QB’s make now.
It’s not like there is another market waiting for these QB’s if they don’t like it.

There was no penalty called but surely this is a suspension. Right?

The play occurred with 7:00 left in the 4th quarter.

TLDR: I built EPA (expected points added) for every CFL play of 2025 and 2026, plus hand-timed time to throw as well as much much more. Davis Alexander is ranked #1 this season in EPA, and it's mostly because he almost never gives the ball away. Full site: https://wagglelytics.ca/

For about two years I've wanted to build a website that tracks advanced stats for the CFL. EPA, pressure rate, air yards, time to throw, blitz rate, success rate, win probability and much more. Numbers that dont show up in a box score.

I'll be honest, I kept putting it off. Part of it was being a bit shy about putting my work out there. Then the new rules were announced, and I figured anything I built would be out of date by 2027. So like many people I found reasons to procrastinate.

But during the season I was like, even with the new rules, I'll still need 2025 and 2026 as a baseline. It won't line up perfectly with 2027, but it's a starting point, and it'll show exactly what the new rules change.

What EPA is (Expected points added)

EPA was the first thing I built, and it's a good way to judge QBs. Every situation on the field (down, distance, where the ball is) is worth a certain number of points, based on what teams have scored from there in the past. EPA is how much a play changes that. Leave your team better off than expected and it's positive. Worse off and it's negative. Add it up over every dropback and you can see the effect the player is having on their team.

One note this is a very strong stat for QBs its a fairly good stat for WRs but not a great stat for RBs.

Example: pinned at your own 5, a team is expected to score about −0.9 points (you're more likely to give up points than score). Complete a 30-yard pass to your own 35 and that's now worth +1.0. That play is +1.9 EPA.

Here's every QB with 150+ dropbacks this season:

CFL 2026 - QB EPA PER DROPBACK (through Week 21, 150+ dropbacks)

Davis Alexander          MTL   +0.30
Nathan Rourke            BC    +0.22
Trevor Harris            SSK   +0.14
Chad Kelly               TOR   +0.08
Vernon Adams Jr.         CGY   +0.06
Cody Fajardo             EDM   +0.06
Dru Brown                WPG   -0.04
Zach Collaros            WPG   -0.05
Jake Maier               OTT   -0.05
McLeod Bethel-Thompson   OTT   -0.08
Tre Ford                 HAM   -0.19
Harrison Frost           HAM   -0.22

How I built it

The CFL doesn't have clean play-by-play data to download, so I copied the play-by-play for every game off CFL.ca and wrote code to turn it into a table. 165 games, almost 24,000 plays, each checked against the official score. A lot of copy and paste lol.

Why Alexander is #1

I expected Alexander to be one of the top QBs, but I didn't think he'd be number 1. He's not the flashiest guy in the league. Maybe I'm a hater. Kelly throws deeper and Rourke makes more highlight plays. So why is he on top?

It comes down to the bad plays, and they don't all cost the same. An interception costs about 4.6 expected points on average. A normal completion is worth about 0.7. So one pick wipes out roughly six completions. A sack costs about 2, close to two incompletions in a row.

So I split it out: how much has each QB lost to picks and sacks, and how good is he on every other play?

QB               LOST TO PICKS   LOST TO SACKS   EPA ON EVERY OTHER PLAY
Nathan Rourke         -58             -47              +0.48
Chad Kelly           -118             -51              +0.44
Davis Alexander       -19             -28              +0.40
Trevor Harris         -63             -39              +0.32

On a normal play, Rourke and Kelly are actually better than Alexander. The difference is what happens when something goes wrong. Kelly's 24 picks have cost Toronto about 118 expected points. Alexander's 4 have cost Montreal about 19. That's pretty much the whole gap.

So he's not the best because of crazy throws. He just almost never gives it away, and EPA loves that.

https://reddit.com/link/1xf7pcr/video/46bulbdz0nxh1/player

Charting from film: time to throw

Originally I wanted to build pressure rate. I really appreciate offensive lines, and I think people underrate them. Nobody notices them until something goes wrong, so I wanted a stat that gives them credit.

Well, I failed. It's really hard to tell from film when pressure actually affects a QB. Did he get rid of it early because a guy was coming, or was that just the play? Two people could watch the same snap and chart it differently. So I switched to stuff I can actually measure.

Time to throw is the first one. The CFL doesn't track it at all, so I time every throw by hand from game film: snap to the moment the ball leaves the QB's hand. 13 games so far, 877 throws. I use the median so one broken play doesn't skew it, and sacks aren't timed.

The league median is 2.33 seconds. Chad Kelly is the quickest at 1.95, and Collaros, Brown and Frost hold it the longest at around 2.5. I've only timed a handful of 2026 games, so this is a lot thinner than the EPA stuff. But so far, faster isn't automatically better:

TIME TO THROW   THROWS   EPA PER THROW   COMPLETION
Under 2.0s        280        +0.14           79%
2.0-2.49s         219        +0.28           70%
2.5-2.99s         170        +0.08           61%
3.0s+             166        +0.18           64%

The quick stuff completes the most but isn't worth much, since a lot of it is short. The best spot so far is 2.0 to 2.5 seconds: long enough for guys to get open, but before the pocket collapses. I'll keep adding games, and next up I'm charting blitzes.

Okay, I think that's enough stats. I hope I didn't nerd out too much. I've got more, but this post is long enough already.

Let me know what you'd want to see next!

Full site: https://wagglelytics.ca/

Of course, Calgary has the 7th-best record this year, while Edmonton was 6th in 2018.

I wanted to buy season tickets. Went on the website, no info, dead links, very tedious. So, ok I’m at the game today, stop by the ticketing office, surely they’ll know how I can buy the tickets. No, apparently there’s a both, can’t find the booth. Ask an employee, they say the tent is inside the stadium. It’s not. Go to guest services. No help there. At this point I’ve dragged my family around for over 30 minutes and all I have to show for it is an email address someone thinks “might” be able to help. At this point I’m rethinking if I want the tickets or not.

After the game, my wife and I had a disagreement if we were at a specific game or not, so I long into my Ticketmaster account to look up my history, and hidden in one of the menu’s was a button to buy the season.

Why was this so difficult? I’m at your game willing to buy 3 season tickets and I can’t find a single person to take my money? And if I don’t get my tickets, you don’t only lose out on my ticket money, you lose out on the money I would spend at every game I don’t go to.

I don’t know if this is the same with the other teams in the league, but this should have been an easy win for them. If all the teams work like this, no wonder attendance is down and the teams are losing money.

By the cosmic hands of fate, all we have done this year…is merely delay the inevitable

Maybe we should check what we are doing before making republic… once is embarrassing. Twice is incompetence.

Hey r/CFL! Here's a little chart I've been making over the course of the CFL season when I heard about The Ottawa Redblacks "perfect" run. While that didn't occur, I figured there's no point throwing away so much good work over a single win, so here you go.

Below is a chart comparing the 1-17 2026 Ottawa Redblacks (red) compared to some other teams of a similar caliber. I of course include the similarly 1-17 2003 Hamilton Tigers (yellow) onto this chart. However, since just two teams would be bland, I also included the three winless NFL teams of the Super Bowl era to fill it out: the 0-14 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (black), the 0-16 2008 Detroit Lions (blue), and the 2017 0-16 Cleveland Browns (orange).

The Redblacks finished with a point differential of -236, below that of the Browns (-176), but above the Lions (-249), Bucs (-287), and Lions (-290). This is because while the Redblacks were beaten, it often times was not by extreme margins. With the except of the 46-16 loss to the Alouettes in Week 12 (Game 10), all of their losses were by 3 scores or less (24 points or less), with 6 being single digit losses.

That may seem like a lot, but compared to the Lions and Tigercats, who each lost by more than 3 scores on three separate occasions, or to the Bucs's five such games, that doesn't seem too bad. The Browns surprisingly had zero such games, and 7 games within single digits (4 of them only by 3). Considering how many people considered the 2017 Browns to be unlucky on top of bad, it makes sense why they are the only ones above the Redblacks on this chart.

I should also mention that Redblacks midway into the season were doing worse than the Lions in the same point of the season, but a few close games permanently cleared them of being worse than Detroit.

And of course, the Redblacks, Lions, and Browns are all elite compared to the clusterf-s that was the 2003 Hamilton Tigers and the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

First, the Ti-Cats, because they lost their first game of the season by 10 points, (while the Redblacks only by 8), followed by losing 41 in their second, there was never a point in the season that the Redblacks were worse than the 2003 Tigercats. After game 5, the Redblacks maintained a point differential of at least 50 over the Tigercats for the remainder of the season. Meaning even if the Redblacks lost the only game they won, they still won't be the worst than the Ti-Cats, at least by point diff. In the same point of the season, the Ti-Cats were the worst team on this chart for about half of it, only losing it do to the Bucs getting destroyed in their last two games, only only barely following below them again in their very last game.

Let's talk about those 1976 Buccaneers, shall we? Did you know that out of the 82 games these worst teams have played, 5 of them were shutouts? One for each team, right? NOPE! ALL OF THEM WERE BY THE BUCS! Impressive considering they have the shortest season on this chart. That includes their 13th game where they were shutout by 42 points. While technically the Ti-Cats have the worse point differential on this chart, considering that they needed 18 games to do what the Bucs did in 14, I think we can agree which team is worse.

And that's about it. Sorry for the ramble-y explanation but I'm more of a data guy than a word smith. Here's the raw data for each teams PT by game number:

I don't... Is it cuz it's on CTV?

Riders play The Lions next week Stamps are out