We’ve reached the halfway point in the CFL season, and division races are heating up. Here are five takeaways from Week 10.
The East is least
No team in the East has more than one win at home or better than a .500 record. In comparison, four of the five teams in the west are above .500.
Heading into this year year, it looked like the East was primed to make a leap with head-coaching changes in four of the five West cities and coordinator changes in Winnipeg, the one team that retained its coach. Yet at the halfway mark the cream of the West has once again risen to the top. Fans in Edmonton and Winnipeg should already be paying attention to their head-to-head games in the East as a crossover situation is a definite possibility.
Redblacks QBs need help
It was assumed that switching QBs from Henry Burris to the red-hot Trevor Harris would be the magic elixir for what ails the spiraling Redblacks. The truth is their issues run much deeper than the QB position.
A look at each quarterback’s last start reveals both have produced, and yet wins haven’t followed:
| Burris (Week 9) | Harris (Week 10) | |
|---|---|---|
| Comp | 21-31 | 23-30 |
| Yards | 322 | 352 |
| TD | 2 | 1 |
| Int | 1 | 0 |
Ottawa is 1-4 since week 5. Their special teams haven’t been good; their secondary has struggled. Burris might be the scapegoat, but there is no escaping the fact that Ottawa hasn’t been impressive in all phases for quite a while.
Johnny “CFL” Football?
A big stir was caused in CFL quarters when an ESPN report came out speculating that Johnny Manziel had a future in the CFL.
When commissioner Jeffrey Orridge’s initial response was that he CFL provides opportunities for players who don’t make it in the NFL the assumption was Manziel heading north was a forgone conclusion.
Not so fast. Manziel’s negotiation rights belong to Hamilton. He was on their neg list as a college freshman. That was well before he won the Heisman or was drafted into the NFL.
Eric Tillman has claimed the Tiger-Cats is not interested. Why would they be? They have the highest-paid player in the league playing the same position and the same style as Johnny Football. What’s more, in Jeremiah Masoli they have one of the league’s better backups. So the Hammer doesn’t seem like a fit for Manziel.
They could always trade his rights. Two teams that could use him are Toronto—whose backup situation is murky—and Montreal, where Jim Popp has never shied from controversial players.
But the Tiger-Cats aren’t trading his rights within the division when they’re fighting for a playoff spot. In the end, the story is much ado about nothing. The commissioner did his best to throw cold water on the situation via Twitter.
Harris carrying Bombers with more carries
I’m going to throw a name in the hat for CFL MVP that most aren’t talking about: Andrew Harris. Harris struggled in his transition to life as a Bomber, but has been unstoppable of late.
He’s the CFL’s leading rusher and has rushing TDs in four straight games. No coincidence the Bombers have won four straight. A big reason is the box is no longer stacked thanks to the insertion of Matt Nichols in the lineup. Nichols has completed over 70 percent of his passes since taking over in Week 5. That’s exactly when the fortunes of Harris and the Bombers started to take off.
| Andrew Harris | Weeks 1–4 | Weeks 5–10 |
|---|---|---|
| Attempts | 43 | 86 |
| Yards | 178 | 397 |
| TDs | 0 | 4 |
| YPC | 4.1 | 4.6 |
#CFLwired worked
Both QBs and coaches wore live mics all game long Sunday night for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats versus Calgary Stampeders contest, and it provided a significant change to the traditional CFL broadcast. A couple of choice words made it through to live-air despite the delay, but for the most part the initiative was an overwhelming success.
Interesting tidbits for the casual fan translated well—like the fact that Kent Austin actually refers to Brandon Banks by his nickname “Speedy B.” It was also great to hear the coaches’ conversations with the referees and their thought processes on challenging and disputing calls.
As a football junkie, I liked listening in on the quarterbacks’ play calls, and I was impressed by how Bo Levi Mitchell and Zach Collaros commanded their huddles and get their teams to the line of scrimmage with great tempo.
While fans couldn’t hear everything (quarterback calls in no-huddle situations were not available for broadcast), it will still force the teams who played to change their naming conventions of formations and concepts as no doubt some opponents will be studying and charting what was heard.