From the very outset, there was something different about the 2026 version of Canadian football.
There was more offence, more scoring, and more big plays across the league.
With quarterback play at historically high levels, it felt as if the fourth quarter of every regular-season game was a jailbreak - back-and-forth, high-scoring football spiced with dramatic endings, week after week.
So, what was happening?
The health of all nine starting quarterbacks through the first month of the season was just one of many factors being cited to explain the early-season scoring burst.
I wrote about that in a column for TSN.ca in early July, examining a slew of factors believed to be at play.
Those trends endured through the end of the regular season. Offensive scoring went from 49.3 points per game in 2025 to 56.3 in 2026, a jump of 14.2 per cent. Teams scored touchdowns on 21.7 per cent of drives compared to 18.6 per cent a year ago. And the league went from 4.9 touchdowns per game to 5.8.
The league’s passer rating saw a one-year jump from 97.4 to 102.8, with essentially the same crop of quarterbacks who had taken most of the CFL’s snaps in 2024 and 2025.
And, most notably, fourth-quarter scoring jumped by 15.1 per cent, with plays of over 15 yards more than doubling. Meanwhile, game-changing plays on defence, such as sacks and interceptions, were down.
So, what was causing this sudden shift in the game? This wasn’t a trend we witnessed over a period of years; it was a one-year jump, and there seemed to be no way to explain that.
Midway through the season, however, I came across some analysis by former CFL offensive lineman Mike Sutherland, who works on CFL broadcasts on RDS and as well at TSN Radio in Ottawa and posts his work on X at @63sutherland.
Sutherland had recognized the many ways the CFL game had changed in 2026, from more passing attempts each game, to the jump in offensive scoring, to an increase in success on second downs from 47.4 per cent to 50.7 per cent, to teams making more trips into the red zone and having more success once they got there.
“As a guy that played during a certain era, it just looked like things were faster,” he said. “Everyone was talking about the uptick in offence and scoring and I just decided to look and it and figure out why there was such a big jump from 2025 to 2026.”
As part of its first wave of changes under commissioner Stewart Johnston the CFL had switched from a referee-controlled 20-second play clock to an automatic 35-second play clock that ran from the end of one play to the beginning of the next.
The league got the results it wanted from that change. The game flow was better, and more plays (roughly 3.5 per game) were being run in the same amount of real time.
But Sutherland identified something else caused by the new play clock: the elimination of an average of 5.20 seconds of real-time rest and recovery for players between plays. When he began looking at the effects that was having on the field, he found an explanation for the offensive jump we were seeing week-to-week.
“The one thing I could say for sure was defensive players were losing on average five or six seconds of rest per play,” said Sutherland. “So, what’s the accumulated effect of that?”
When he applied his defensive fatigue theory to what he was seeing on the field, it started to make sense.
During the season, I began to share Sutherland’s work with former players, current coaches and executives. All of them endorsed it as being relevant to what was happening in the game.
I took the opportunity this week to discuss Sutherland’s concepts with some of the Grey Cup participants, including Edmonton quarterback Cody Fajardo, who were intrigued by what I was sharing with them.
The Elks, for instance, made a habit this season of winning games in the fourth quarter, often at the expense of defensive breakdowns on the other side.
Greg Dick, the CFL’s director of football operations and deputy commissioner, reviewed Sutherland’s work and did not dismiss it. But he believes defensive fatigue is just one of many factors elevating offensive play this season, also crediting offensive playcalling and elite quarterback play.
It’s interesting that this jump in scoring and offence in 2026 occurred one year prior to the coming changes in field dimensions that will alter the game even further, in ways we cannot yet measure.
None of this is bad for the league. A game where defenses break down in the late stages, producing lead changes and dramatic finishes, is exactly what the league wants.
But it serves to remind us that football is an ecosystem, and every change has ramifications that go beyond those we can see coming.
To read more on Sutherland’s work and its implications for the matchup between the Edmonton Elks and Montreal Alouettes see the links below.
The 35-Second Squeeze: Full 2026 Study