The Toronto Argonauts are set to play their sixth consecutive road game to open the season on Saturday against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Head coach Mike Miller heard some of the frustrations shared by his team after the loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers a week ago, but the first-year bench boss is looking to use the schedule as a building block for success rather than an excuse.
Miller joined First Up on TSN1050 on Thursday morning to discuss the Argonauts’ start to the season, his expectations for Saturday against Hamilton and the outlook for the rest of the season.
“Adversity is always around us, all the time,” Miller said. “And building mental toughness is an important part of this business. So this gives us an ability to get very cohesive as a unit and work together quite a bit.”
The Argonauts will play only six games at home compared to 12 on the road this season, due in part to the FIFA World Cup being hosted at BMO Field in Toronto. After the 30-21 loss to the Blue Bombers on Friday, Argos quarterback Chad Kelly aired his frustrations with the schedule to the media, calling the situation “unprecedented.”
“No professional team has had to do what we’re doing right now with five straight away games, back-to-back-to-back leaving the East to go West, and it’s not easy,” Kelly said after the loss. “It’s definitely not easy. I think we’ve got to dig down. We’ve got Hamilton next; that’s close by. We have to just make it happen. We’ve got to make it work.”
Miller tried to rein in his quarterback’s frustrations when talking to TSN1050.
“I understand, and sometimes there’s frustration after the game,” Miller said. “But we said going into this ‘Hey, this is the situation,’ and it’s always about us.
“We say we’re process driven, and that’s it. We don’t use anything as an excuse or another reason, it’s all about executing, it’s about getting better, it’s about how we respond, and that’s our mindset. We control the controllables. This week it’s about our preparation and how we respond going into Hamilton.”
The Argonauts and Tiger-Cats enter their Week 7 showdown tied for second place in the East Division at 2-3. Toronto finished the 2025 campaign second-worst in the CFL at 5-13, but the team - and particularly the offence - has looked much stronger under Miller, who is in his first season at the helm.
Part of that has been the return of Kelly, who missed the entire 2025 campaign while rehabbing from a leg injury suffered in the 2024 East Final.
“I had a lot of questions about [how Chad Kelly would play in his return], and that’s [to be expected],” Miller said. “His preparation is second to none, he’s a generous teammate, great communicator, and he goes out there and battles. Back to training camp, we’ve always said - and I know it’s [a cliche], but it’s all about getting better for that next rep and Chad understands that as well as anybody.”
Kelly has thrown for a league-leading 1,804 passing yards, averaging over 360 per game, and is tied for the league lead with 14 touchdowns passes. On the other hand, he also has a league-leading eight interceptions thrown in an up-and-down start to the campaign.
“He’s done a great job, and in any season or any practice there are always throws you wish he had back, there’s always things we continue to learn from and continue to grow,” Miller said. “We’re certainly excited and happy that Chad’s an Argo.”
The Tiger-Cats have dropped two games in a row since star QB Bo Levi Mitchell went down with a gruesome leg injury in the first half of their game against the Blue Bombers two weeks ago. They scored only seven points in a blowout loss against the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Week 6 where the offence struggled with Jake Dolegala filling in under centre.
Despite that, Miller isn’t taking the challenge of playing the Tiger-Cats lightly.
“We have such great respect for [Tiger-Cats head coach] Scott Milanovich, [general manager] Orlando Steinauer, the rest of their management team,” Miller said. “They do a great job there, with the free agency and the draft. They’re always a formidable opponent and we have great respect for them. Playing in their building is always a challenge, they’re very passionate and now how it shakes out with their quarterback, we’ll just have to see.”
Offensive production has skyrocketed across the league this season, with many teams and players threatening some vaunted numbers in the CFL record book.
Miller related his own team’s high-flying success back to his days coaching in the NFL with the Arizona Cardinals, where he worked with Hall of Fame wide receivers like Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin.
“I was very blessed - the thing that made those guys special in Arizona was not just their skill level but they were great people and they were pushed to get better each day,” Miller said. “So therein lies the comparison for this group that we have ... these guys are hungry to get better.”
The increased offensive production around the league - five teams are averaging over 30 points a game through six weeks - is more a result of increased quarterback talent north of the border, Miller says.
“A reflection of the skill level at the quarterback position,” Miller said. “There are a lot of good quarterbacks in this league, and I think it gets maligned sometimes through the years that I’ve been up here.
“A lot of good QBs, a lot of great players, and you combine that with great coaching up here. So every week is a great challenge, these teams are really skilled, they play hard, and we know this is a quarterback-driven sport and definitely a quarterback-driven league, and I think that’s a testament to the quarterback play up here.”
The Argonauts play their first home game of the season on Aug. 6 against the Calgary Stampeders at BMO Field.
