Grey Cup primer: Can Montreal stop Saskatchewan?
CBC
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The Saskatchewan Roughriders face the Montreal Alouettes for the Canadian Football League championship on Sunday at 6 p.m. ET in Winnipeg. Here's a primer on the 112th Grey Cup game:
Saskatchewan is favoured to end its Grey Cup drought.
The Roughriders haven't won a championship since 2013, which is also the last time they played for the Grey Cup. Twelve years may not sound like much, but that's a pretty long dry spell in a nine-team league. The B.C. Lions are the only other club that hasn't played in the title game since the Riders' last appearance.
In the meantime, things were a little, well, rough for the Riders. They had an overall regular-season record of 83-92 and just three playoff wins in the 10 seasons from 2014-2024 (2020 was cancelled due to Covid).
This year, though, Saskatchewan has been the CFL's top team from the get-go. They raced out to a 4-0 start and ran their record to 8-1 before finishing a league-best 12-6 following two meaningless losses to close the regular season after they'd clinched the West Division title.
After enjoying a first-round playoff bye, Saskatchewan rallied to beat visiting B.C. 24-21 in a thrilling West final last Saturday. Trailing 21-17 with just 63 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, quarterback Trevor Harris drove the Riders 74 yards in seven plays for the game-winning touchdown on a three-yard pass to Canadian receiver Tommy Nield with 11 seconds left.
Now it's up to Harris and company to deliver a rare (and much-deserved) championship to the passionate, watermelon-hatted fans of Saskatchewan. Their team has won just four of the 111 Grey Cup games to date, while losing 15 of them for an abysmal .211 winning percentage. But the Riders are favoured by a healthy four points on Sunday, implying about a 2-in-3 chance of victory.
Montreal's hopes hinge on a hammy.
Alouettes fans can relate to the Riders' pain. They went 13 years between Grey Cup appearances before their team won it in 2023 by upsetting heavily favoured Winnipeg.
This season, Montreal went 10-8 to finish second in the East. Then they dealt the Blue Bombers another crushing blow in the playoffs, outgunning them 42-33 to quash Winnipeg's hopes of reaching a record-tying sixth consecutive Grey Cup game. Last weekend, the Als marched into Hamilton for the East final and upset the first-place Tiger-Cats 19-16 on a walk-off 45-yard field goal by Jose Maltos Diaz.
With that win, Montreal quarterback Davis Alexander improved to 13-0 as a starter in the CFL. Including their two playoff victories, the Als are 9-0 with him in the lineup this year. But a balky left hamstring caused Alexander to miss 11 games, and Montreal went 3-8 with 37-year-old journeyman McLeod Bethel-Thompson as their primary backup.
Unfortunately, Alexander reaggravated that hamstring on a drive-ending tackle during the fourth quarter of last Saturday's East final. He did not miss any plays after the Als regained possession, and he led the seven-play, 37-yard drive that resulted in Maltos Diaz' game-winning kick.
But head coach Jason Maas admitted his star QB will not be fully healthy for the Grey Cup, even though Maas and Alexander both promise he'll start after a week of rehab work on the hammy. Encouragingly, Alexander took part in the Alouettes' first practice on Wednesday, though the team listed him as a "limited" participant.
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