AMSOIL Power Rankings: Rolling into OK Tire Labour Day Weekend

TORONTO — As Vin Diesel said in The Fast And The Furious, “It don’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning is winning.”

That sentiment came up as the CFL.ca staff was debating where to put teams in this week’s edition of the CFL Power Rankings presented by AMSOIL. The Toronto Argonauts generated a lot of conversation with their missed field goal rouge win in the Week 11 opener but the second that the ball sailed wide of the uprights and out of the end zone, they had improved to 6-4, making them just one of three teams in the league — all of them in the East — with a record over the .500 mark.

That brings us to an interesting place as we get ready for the 2024 edition of the OK Tire Labour Day Weekend. Two of the three classic rivalries: the Winnipeg Blue Bombers facing the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Edmonton Elks playing the Calgary Stampeders, carry a ton of weight given that the West Division has more parity that we’ve seen in years. The Riders remain in first place with a 5-5-1 record, with Winnipeg and BC (both 5-6) right behind them. Calgary (4-6) hosts Edmonton (3-8) and as we stand on this pivotal moment in the regular season, anything feels possible.

Let’s get into what that means for the teams in this week’s rankings.

OK TIRE LABOUR DAY WEEKEND
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1. Montreal Alouettes (10-1)

Last Week: 1
Last Game: 21-17 win over Edmonton
Next Game: Vs. BC, Fri. Sept. 6

Worth noting: The Als gave us a familiar blueprint for their 10th win of the season. Trailing at halftime, they were undeterred and whittled away their deficit in a dominant third quarter that saw the Elks muster negative-two yards of offence. Cody Fajardo looked good in his return, particularly in that second half, steering the Als’ to a pass-heavy 398 yards of net offence. The team heads into a bye week as the league’s winningest team. If they can get healthier with this time off and perhaps get some talented bodies back in the lineup, they’ll be in great position to soon lock up the East Division and put themselves in an optimal position for the playoffs.

2. Ottawa REDBLACKS (7-2-1)

Last Week: 2
Last Game: 34-27 win over BC
Next game: Touchdown Pacific At BC, Sat. Aug. 31

Worth noting: Saturday’s win over the visiting BC Lions might have been the REDBLACKS’ most impressive showing of the season. For as much talk as there may be about Nathan Rourke re-acclimating to the Lions’ offence and the CFL in general, consider that the REDBLACKS’ defence just might be able to clamp down on quarterbacks and offences as a whole and swing a game in their direction. The REDBLACKS had an interception, forced a pair of fumbles off of Rourke and sacked him three times. That’s a valuable thing to be tapping into as we head into the most important stretch of the season. Offensively, Dru Brown threw for 390 yards — his second-most productive game of the season — while the team stayed undefeated at TD Place.

3. Winnipeg Blue Bombers (5-6)

Last Week: 4
Last Game: 26-23 win over Hamilton 
Next game: At Saskatchewan, Sun. Sept. 1

Worth noting: No, it was not a pretty one, but the Bombers fought through a difficult game against the Ticats and found a way. The result, thanks to owning the tiebreaks over both Calgary and BC, is second place in the West Division. The record isn’t near where people thought it might be at the start of the season, but that championship mentality keeps seeping through for this team. That game-sealing, go-ahead drive, despite three previous Zach Collaros interceptions showed it, complete with Kenny Lawler making the hero catch. After the game, Bombers’ head coach Mike O’Shea searched for the right words for the two-time MOP before settling on “we’ve been around him long enough. He’s f—— awesome.” We don’t know that anyone could top O’Shea’s comments, but how about Lawler with a line on the win that serves for the bigger picture too? “As long as there’s time on the clock don’t count us out,” he told TSN.

4. Toronto Argonauts (6-4)

Last Week: 6
Last Game: 20-19 win over Saskatchewan
Next game: At Hamilton, Mon. Sept. 2

Worth noting: Speaking of not-so-pretty wins, the Argos’ rise here isn’t so much buoyed by their rouge victory, but for what they could be, should the offence catch up with the two other phases of their game (again, disregarding the rouge). We’ve seen all season what Janarion Grant is capable of, and he may have had another return TD against the Riders were it not for a face mask takedown. The Argos’ defence got them a pair of interceptions as part of a four-turnover outing and if the offence picks up with Chad Kelly back at the controls, this team will be headed back up the East Division standings. As it stands now, the Argos are on just their second win streak of the season.

5. Edmonton Elks (3-8)

Last Week: 5
Last Game: 21-17 loss to Montreal
Next game: At Calgary, Mon. Sept. 2

Worth noting: We’re not going to knock the Elks down after they went cross-country and gave the league’s top team a difficult game. The Elks’ win streak was halted at three games, but this team seems to have turned a corner over the last month, whether it was Tre Ford briefly running the show before his injury, or McLeod Bethel-Thompson stepping back in at QB1. Like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol. 2, the Elks’ run game has punched its way out of the grave it was in and is running roughshod over anyone that gets in front of it. The timing of the Labour Day Classic couldn’t be any more perfectly dramatic. Yes, the Elks and Stamps hold down the bottom two spots in the West Division, but there are only five points between the Elks and the first-place Roughriders in the standings.

6. Saskatchewan Roughriders (5-5-1)

Last Week: 3
Last Game: 20-19 loss to Toronto
Next game: Vs. Winnipeg, Sun. Sept. 1

Worth noting: Now 0-4-1 in their last five games, the Riders are being tested in uniquely challenging ways, even for the hardened veterans that may have thought they’ve seen everything the CFL could throw at them. Ties are rare. Losing on a missed field goal rouge is rare. Also in this dry spell is a missed field goal loss to the Als, a lopsided decision to the Elks and a four-point L courtesy of the Als in Week 8. The Riders are certainly being tested and it doesn’t get any easier for them as the resurgent Bombers head to Mosaic on Sunday for the first part of their Labour Day Classic series. We think this group is different than the past two editions of the Riders, who had promising campaigns nosedive into crashing outside of the playoff picture. For all of their struggles, a win would give them some breathing room atop of the West.