Geoff Robins/CFL.ca
It’s something we’ve only seen once this century but after a busy off-season filled with free agency movement, you wonder if it could happen again in 2022.
The last time the CFL’s East Division had more wins than the West came all the way back in 2001, when the East won a combined 41 games to the West’s 31. Could we be in store for something like this again, 21 years later?
There are a number of factors that go into that win-loss disparity, including an Ottawa team leaving the league, then rejoining in 2014, which shuffled Winnipeg back and forth from the East to the West. And when you have five West teams and four East teams, the odds are that the West will pile up more wins.
In the shortened 2021 season, we started to see a shift in the balance of power in the league. The West won a combined 36 games to the East’s 27, but we also saw the East get three teams into the playoffs, holding off a West Division crossover for the first time since 2015. Keep in mind in that win-loss disparity that the Ottawa REDBLACKS were only able to add three Ws to that total.
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Jeremiah Masoli’s move from Hamilton to Ottawa should be a franchise-shifting one for the REDBLACKS, who have overhauled their roster after two non-playoff seasons (Geoff Robins/CFL.ca)
It’s Ottawa that will have to make the difference here in this new season. On the heels of that three-win campaign, the team hired Shawn Burke as GM, prying him away from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Burke went out and rebuilt the REDBLACKS’ roster over the last few months, signing Jeremiah Masoli at QB, beefing up the offensive line and peppering receivers like Darvin Adams, Jaelon Acklin and B.J. Cunningham into the mix. He brought RB William Powell back to Ottawa and added DE Kwaku Boateng and DBs Money Hunter, Pat Levels and Trumaine Washington into the defence.
Assuming the pieces all come together the way that they should, the REDBLACKS will be a threat to win every week this season. A lot of that, of course, has to do with their quarterback play.
If the balance of power is going to shift in the league, it’ll have to start there.
For the first time in a long time, it feels like the East holds the edge in that regard. We know what Dane Evans can do in Hamilton and what Jeremiah Masoli will be able to do in Ottawa. We saw the Argos finally hand the keys to the offence to McLeod Bethel-Thompson and in Montreal, Vernon Adams Jr. will return as the Alouettes’ No. 1 QB, with a very solid backup behind him in Trevor Harris.
In the West, when you get past mainstay QBs like Zach Collaros in Winnipeg, Bo Levi Mitchell in Calgary and Cody Fajardo in Saskatchewan, things don’t feel as certain. The Lions’ commitment to a pair of Canadian pivots is a bold one, but Nathan Rourke will only be heading into his second season when he goes into training camp as the team’s starter. Backup Michael O’Connor is in a similar situation, with minimal live, in-game reps coming through two prior seasons, first with Toronto in 2019 then as a third-stringer in Calgary in 2021.
We’ve seen what Nick Arbuckle can do on the field, as he was an excellent fill-in for an injured Bo Levi Mitchell in Calgary in the 2019 season. Since then, we haven’t seen a lot of the 28-year-old, who lost the starting gig in Toronto thanks to injury and an Argos team that came together and started winning when Bethel-Thompson got on the field. Arbuckle landed in Edmonton in October of last year and the team opted to hang onto him at that point, keeping him out of games with their season lost and their focus on 2022.
With Chris Jones in as head coach and GM in Edmonton, Arbuckle will have to win the starting job out of training camp. While he’s fully capable of that, he’ll then have to prove himself as a starter with this new team, the way any young starter would.
All of this isn’t to say that things won’t work out in BC or in Edmonton. If they do, we could be looking at some incredible strength at QB across the league. But these are questions that will need to be answered in May and when the season kicks off in June. Based on what we know right now, when the temperature is still stuck below zero and the next event at a CFL venue is the NHL’s Heritage Classic at Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton, the QB advantage overall lies in the East.
While QB play alone won’t be enough to make a team a Grey Cup contender, it’s the foundation of any successful team. Barring something unforeseen, every team in the East has that in place and it could be a game changer for the league in 2022.
