ESPN2's feast or famine is back with a feast of 3 CFL games. Savor them because the regular season cupboard goes dry after this weekend's games.
Montréal has a chance to claw back into the East race on Thursday Night Football but in the toughest CFL destination: Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton. The Argonauts go out west to Edmonton for Friday Night Football, a rare turn of Toronto on ESPN2.
Calgary travels to Winnipeg for the only non-ESPN2 game this weekend on Saturday night. The Sunday battle of the Roughriders in Ottawa is the final scheduled ESPN2 game for 7 weeks.
The BC Lions get a mini vacation with the week off.
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ESPN2
Thursday
Montréal @ Hamilton, 7:30p
Friday
Toronto @ Edmonton, 9p
Sunday
Saskatchewan @ Ottawa, 4p
TSN
Thursday
Montréal @ Hamilton, 7:30p
Friday
Toronto @ Edmonton, 9p
Saturday
Calgary @ Winnipeg, 6p
Sunday
Saskatchewan @ Ottawa, 4p
Bye week
BC
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Boy do the Montréal Alouettes miss Marc Trestman.
The Montréal coaching situation fell into a previous pattern as the team fired coach Tom Higgins and once again returned GM Jim Popp to the sidelines.
Higgins is the second hire since Trestman left the Alouettes to coach the NFL Chicago Bears to not quite fit in with Montréal.
Higgins was clearly better than Dan Hawkins, who was honestly an embarrassment to himself and the team. But Higgins seemed to struggle even with having CFL coaching experience. The team got off to a horrible start in both seasons but did have a comeback in the second half last year.
Higgins' benching of John Bowman was highly puzzling. The Michael Sam and Chad Johnson situations weren't Higgins fault but you never got the sense that Higgins was in control in those situations.
Anthony Calvillo moves up from receivers coach to quarterbacks coach. Turk Schonert, the offensive coordinator, had also been working with the quarterbacks.
Letting Scott Milanovich go to Toronto is a double whammy since the Alouettes used to employ him and he went to a divisional rival.
Jim Popp and Montréal ownership need to agree on a coach, preferably someone younger with CFL experience and more intensity than what Higgins brought to the team. Every other CFL team has a coach that has a plan for his team. Montréal hasn't had that since the end of the 2012 season.
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Week 9 highlights:
- Saskatchewan will win a game, likely against Winnipeg. The 3-point loss to Calgary shows that the team hasn't given up and plays really tough at home.
- Montreal snapped an incredible winless streak at BC Place in Vancouver that went back to 2000. Even in the heart of the Calvillo era, winning on the West Coast proved difficult. The only win in Vancouver in that time came in 2010 at Empire Field. Firing a coach after a win is tough, but after snapping that kind of streak shows the firing was coming for awhile.
- Toronto is improving its comeback reputation with its latest win over Ottawa. The Argos get tougher as the game goes on, a bad sign for their opponents.
- Hamilton doesn't need Tim Hortons Field to beat a top opponent. The thought was that the game in Edmonton would be close and a defensive thriller. It wasn't. The battle of Southern Ontario just got even more interesting.
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We knew the Toronto Argonauts were not going to draw well at home in 2015. New ownership but that ownership isn't in control. Invisible marketing with an outgoing ownership. Pan Am Games and Parapan Am Games. Off-kilter schedule thanks to the Toronto Blue Jays.
Sunday's game had beautiful weather, the Ottawa RedBlacks in town, and drew 14,748. This was the smallest crowd for an Argos game at Rogers Centre since 2003.
If the Argos play at Tim Hortons Field on October 6, we'll be curious to see how much better the team draws … in Hamilton.
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The August doldrums have hit the ESPN2 CFL telecasts, though the games were a bit … well … boring. The Edmonton game in Montréal was close but not terribly exciting; the telecast drew 175,000 viewers. The Calgary home blowout over Ottawa drew the smallest crowd of the season at 93,000 viewers. The late Saturday start time might have had a bit to do with the lower numbers.
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| Game | Announcers |
| Montréal @ BC | Chris Cuthbert/Glen Suitor |
| Hamilton @ Edmonton | Chris Cuthbert/Duane Forde |
| Calgary @ Saskatchewan | Chris Cuthbert/Glen Suitor |
| Ottawa @ Toronto | Gord Miller/Matt Dunigan |
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