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There’s little doubt that the four best teams in the Canadian Football League are in action this weekend and it feels like any combination could emerge to play in the 106th Grey Cup game in Edmonton on Nov. 25.

Home teams have had a decided advantage of late when it comes to the division finals, riding an 8-0 run. The last win by a visiting team came in 2013, when the Ticats and Roughriders both won on the road.

But there’s every reason to believe that streak could come to an end this weekend, based on how closely matched these teams have been over the course of the season and how impressive the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Hamilton Tiger-Cats were a week ago in division semi-final wins.

To get to their first Grey Cup game in seven seasons, the Blue Bombers have to knock off a team that has owned or shared the best regular-season record in the CFL for six consecutive years. 

Calgary has been nearly unbeatable at home over much of that span and has managed to rebound from heartbreaking Grey Cup losses in each of the past two years to finish with the league’s best record.

But the Stamps are far from the league’s hottest team right now, having dropped three games in a row near the end of the season, including consecutive losses at home.

One of those three late-season losses came against Winnipeg in what was quarterback Matt Nichols’ first career win over Calgary. The Blue Bombers locked in on the Stamps in that game, then went out and punched their ticket to the postseason with a 29-21 win.

The Blue Bombers have won six of their past seven, with their only loss coming in a meaningless game against Edmonton where many of their best players were rested.

They are healthy, determined and playing their best football right now on all three sides of the ball.

In the East, the Ottawa Redblacks where a hard team to figure out all season long, never winning or losing more than two games in a row until their meaningless win over Toronto during the final week of the season.

They won 11 games – three of which came against the Tiger-Cats. But Ottawa failed to score a touchdown in one of those games and won another by only four points.

The Tiger-Cats finished with an 8-10 record on the season but were one of the best sub-.500 teams in CFL history, amassing the most yardage in the league on offence during the regular season and surrendering the third-lowest number of yards.

And any sense that Hamilton’s injury-depleted receiving core can’t provide enough targets for Jeremiah Masoli vanished last week during the Tiger-Cats’ 48-8 destruction of the BC Lions in the East Division semi-final.

Masoli has started playoff games before, but only while subbing for an injured starter. On the heels of his remarkable season, he gets a chance to win the big one.

Nichols finally won his first playoff game last weekend and has thrown just one interception in his last six games.

Neither the Blue Bombers, nor the Tiger-Cats have won a Grey Cup this century.

Both teams are primed to break the CFL's recent road-team jinx and move one step closer to capturing their first Grey Cup win of this millennium.

 

Head shots and mid-season rule changes

On Thursday, after days of intense discussion at the league office and with their partners among the nine teams, the CFL announced it will be adding an eighth official to the field for Sunday’s division finals and next week’s Grey Cup game, purely to monitor blows to the quarterback.

The move came in response to another ugly, high hit on a quarterback that resulted in Saskatchewan’s Brandon Bridge being knocked form the Western semi-final without a flag being thrown. It’s an occurrence that’s been all too common this season and one that gives the league a bad look, especially in an environment where player safety is a top concern.

There was discussion about potentially using the command centre to correct missed roughing-the-passer calls, but there were concerns about delays or growing pains in execution with just three games to play this season.

In the end, adding another official was the simplest, most effective and least disruptive initiative as an interim measure. The new official won’t be allowed to call any other infractions and won’t even carry a flag. He will simply be asked to inform the head referee if he sees a hit on a quarterback that is not flagged.

He will line up in the backfield to the left of the quarterback and adjust his positioning after the snap, depending on how the play develops.

With the CFL recently empowering the umpire – who normally looks for blocking and holding fouls – to call roughing the passer, there will be three sets of eyes monitoring late hits on the quarterback.

While this may help the league avoid the embarrassment of illegal hits on quarterbacks that aren’t penalized, it doesn’t address the bigger issue regarding the safety of quarterbacks and the hits they continue to take.

That will have to be part of a bigger, broader discussion this off-season.

Don’t be surprised if the conversation turns to ejecting players who deliver high hits to the quarterback, since it seems clear the league needs a greater deterrent. In a sport that is changing rapidly when it comes to health and safety of its players, it feels like the next logical step.

Suggestions that the CFL is not interested in player safety, especially when it comes to quarterbacks, are illogical. What football league doesn’t want to keep its best and highest-profile players on the field?

But the fact is something has gone amiss and the league needs to correct it before the 2019 season.

 

Coaching searches on hold

The CFL was once the Wild West when it came to hiring coaches, rife with tampering and teams reaching out to coaches who were still actively pursuing the Grey Cup.

That all changed after it came to light during Grey Cup week three years ago that the Edmonton Eskimos coaching staff was well down the path of signing with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, which they did shortly after hoisting the Grey Cup.

As such, the league has strict rules against tampering, which it reinforced recently by issuing a memo that warns of fines of $50,000 and a first-round draft pick.

But now the league is preventing teams from even making requests to speak with coaching candidates on other teams, including on those teams that have already been eliminated from the playoffs, which seems a tad extreme.

It’s an embargo that won’t be lifted until 48 hours after the Grey Cup.

So while there may be rumours of whom the BC Lions or Toronto Argonauts would like to interview for their vacant head coaching positions, both teams are restricted from approaching anyone currently employed in the league.

 

Argos coaching search

The Argonauts’ search for their next head coach is expected to include requests to speak to all of the obvious candidates – including Winnipeg offensive co-ordinator Paul LaPolice, Calgary defensive co-ordinator DeVone Claybrooks and Hamilton assistant head coach Orlondo Steinauer.

Here are two names not currently working in the league that the Argos are expected to speak to: Kent Austin and Corey Chamblin, both of whom are Grey Cup winners.

Chamblin has been working at the University of Arkansas while Austin has been paid this season as a consultant to the Ticats.

Austin’s return to the CFL in Hamilton after coaching at the American collegiate level was considered a coup at the time. Although the Ticats almost won a Grey Cup under him in 2014, they never got back to the big game and Austin stepped down as head coach last season after Hamilton started 0-9.

Chamblin won a Grey Cup with Saskatchewan in 2013 and was fired halfway through the 2015 season after the Roughriders got off to a horrendous start. He resurfaced last season as defensive co-ordinator with the Argos, leading a defence that helped Toronto win a Grey Cup.

The incoming CFL coaches’ salary cap means the Argonauts are likely to retain members of their staff who have years remaining on their contracts. The fact that Chamblin would be familiar with those coaches from his 2016 experience is just one more plus for him.

 

Lions coaching search

The sense around the Lions is that the franchise will interview between six to eight candidates for their head coaching job, and general manager Ed Hervey is believed to be leaning towards hiring one of the league's many qualified assistant coaches/co-ordinators who has paid his dues and is ready to take on a head coaching challenge.

That would rule out someone like former Toronto head coach Marc Trestman.

Hamilton defensive co-ordinator Jerry Glanville, who apparently would relish the opportunity to be a head coach in the CFL, is not believed to be on the radar of the Argos or Lions.

 

Dealing with a cap crunch 

With the elimination of five teams from the playoffs, teams are getting around to the business of having to deal with the incoming salary cap for coaches and football administration, a final version of which will be approved this off-season.

The Eskimos released four coaches last week, partly due to the elimination of a couple of jobs. Staffers in Saskatchewan were told this week of pay cuts that will be necessary to make sure the Roughriders are under the cap, a process that is likely going across the league as teams are eliminated.

To say that coaches and GMs are unhappy about all of this is an understatement, with many quietly claiming the result will be significant defections from a coaching pool that was already struggling to attract quality candidates, given that CFL salaries are significantly lower than those of the NFL or major college jobs and there are no pensions.

The league will not release details of how this cap will be implemented, but here is what we do know:

- The coaches and football administration cap of $2.738 million will be applied to 28 jobs, 11 in coaching and 17 in football operations.

- The cap will be split into two separate amounts that will be administered separately to coaches and GMs under two different amounts.

- When a team fires a coach who has term remaining on his contract, once every five years it will be exempt from having the remaining dollars on that contract count against the cap. Beyond that, amounts remaining on contracts for all other fired coaches must be amortized over five years.

- The league is also bringing in a football operations cap which will affect things like scouting budgets. Off-season mini-camps will be a thing of the past, replaced by extended rookie camp where teams will be allowed to have unsigned players participating.

A couple of the immediate effects of this will be that more head coaches will be expected to take on the additional role of offensive or defensive co-ordinator as a cost-saving matter.

In addition, when a head coach is fired it’s likely that a good part of his staff will be retained because teams can’t afford to swallow the remaining amounts on a bunch of contracts.

Argo GM Jim Popp said during the news conference announcing Trestman’s dismissal that this will be the case in Toronto.