Ottawa Redblacks dig big hole for themselves early in the CFL season
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The Ottawa Redblacks overcame a slow start, but not the poor choices they made throughout another slump-busting performance Sunday night.
Alas, the slump they busted wasn’t their own, as they graciously helped their opponents into the win column for the second week in a row.
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Seven nights after becoming the Toronto Argos’ first victims of the 2025 CFL season, the now 1-4 Redblacks fell at Commonwealth Stadium to the previously 0-3 Edmonton Elks, mostly by their own undoing.
They missed assignments, dropped passes and generally didn’t make enough plays on offence, defence or special teams to ensure a better outcome, but the 39-33 defeat will be remembered for the bad decisions made in once again taking too many penalties as well as clock management that prevented them from completely erasing a 22-3 deficit in the three minutes heading into halftime.
After a six-yard touchdown pass from Dru Brown to Eugene Lewis and a scoring, 97-yard punt return by Kalil ‘The Thrill’ Pimpleton, the Redblacks had a chance to at least narrow the gap to two if not take the lead outright when they were facing a second-and-one at their 51-yard line with 14 seconds on the clock.
Quizzically, they called a running play and, while Daniel Adeboboye successfully gained the first down, it also cost Ottawa nine more valuable seconds.
Two short passes later, they wound up with neither a field goal, touchdown, nor the huge momentum they would have had when receiving the kickoff to start the second half.
The target of criticism from callers to the post-game show on TSN1200 was again head coach Bob Dyce, who offered an insufficient explanation for that pivotal series when grilled by AJ Jakubec in the radio station’s “live from the locker room” segment by addressing the passes, but not the egregious call to run the ball.
Unless Dyce was protecting or had overruled Tommy Condell, such decisions rest with the offensive coordinator.
What lies at the head coach’s feet are the flags being thrown on the most undisciplined team in the CFL — they’re killing the Redblacks.
On Sunday, they took nine penalties for 118 yards — the second time this season they’ve gifted their opponents more than a football field of free turf — while the Elks were flagged six times for 80 yards.
The Redblacks want to be an aggressive team, but they’re not being very smart about it.
They did show they know how to play within the rules just once this season when they were flagged just four times for 26 yards in their only win.
In their four losses, they have given away an average of 104 penalty yards.
The worst of the Ottawa infractions on Sunday was committed early in the third quarter by linebacker Frankie Griffin, who wiped out his own sack, fumble recovery and touchdown because he hit quarterback Tre Ford in the head.
Instead of taking what would have been their only lead of the game, the Redblacks presented the Elks a fresh series of downs and the ability to escape the shadows of their goalposts.
Dyce showed his frustration on the post-game show when he called out players by name — Griffin and defensive back Robert Priester, who was called for a facemask on Edmonton’s early first-quarter touchdown and has now taken bad penalties (including a pair of horse-collar tackles against Montreal) in at least three games.
“Honestly, people won’t play,” Dyce said when Jakubec asked him how the penalty problem gets solved. “Priester took the one and sat him for that quarter. We have to evaluate whether he’ll have an opportunity going forward. Frankie took two unnecessary roughness penalties on the quarterback and at the end of the day, we have pretty stiff rules about that.
“So I’ve got some decisions to make.”
Dyce had similar words after the Redblacks took 11 penalties for 98 yards in their home-opening loss to the Alouettes, but if something was done, it wasn’t evident in the transactions report.
Compounding the issue, of course, is the fact that Griffin is a good player who is starting at WILL linebacker for the injured Davion Taylor.
So are they now to bench Griffin and use a third-stringer?
And then there’s the injury problem as a whole.
On Sunday, the Redblacks saw return specialist DeVonte Dedmon carted off the field in the second quarter with what looked to be a serious leg injury.
They also lost their third Canadian safety, Charlie Ringland, to a hamstring injury.
That’s at least two more players added to an injury report that, before they landed in Edmonton, already carried 16 names.
But the injuries are bad luck. The penalties are bad football.
Shouldering the blame for at least three flags was quarterback Dru Brown, who showed he is fully recovered from the hip injury he suffered in the season opener by completing 31-of-43 passes for 316 yards and a pair of TD tosses without an interception.
“We’ve got to clean up procedural penalties,” Brown, who was also called for an illegal forward pass, told Jakubec. “I take that as my responsibility in my communication with the guys up front and the receivers. The game’s too hard to win in the first place, so we can’t be moving backwards.”
Asked about the team’s mindset heading into a crucial away-and-home series with the much-improved Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Brown replied: “I don’t think that wavers with the guys that we have. We have a bunch of guys who love football and love to compete and love to work. It is early, obviously, but there’s a level of urgency that we have and that we need to continue to have to improve. I don’t think we’re necessarily playing bad football schematically. We’re hurting ourselves with penalties.”
When he asked Jakubec the penalty yardage total on the game and heard the answer, Brown said: “Yeah, that’s a football field. That’s a problem that we’ll address. Like I said, the procedural things we will get cleaned up and we’ll go from there.”
Brown was asked for an opinion on how that gets addressed.
“I like to only speak on kind of my side of the ball,” he said. “I don’t really know. I don’t try to act like I know what other people’s jobs are … I’m not educated enough to speak on some of the other aspects of the penalties.”
Somebody better figure it out before it gets too late too early in the season for the Redblacks.
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