Ottawa Redblacks: Why winning is secondary in CFL pre-season finale
Article content
Completing their exhibition schedule with an unblemished record will not be the priority for the Ottawa Redblacks on Friday.
Sure they’d like to beat the Montreal Alouettes for the second week in a row — all proud professional athletes want to win every game they play — but the coaching staff is more concerned with determining the roster for a game just six days later, when the Redblacks kick off the Canadian Football League’s 2025 schedule in Regina against the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Recommended Videos
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Ottawa Redblacks: Why winning is secondary in CFL pre-season finale Back to video
tap here to see other videos from our team.
That means fans at TD Place for Ottawa’s first home game since last season’s Week 21, 37-31 victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats will not see most of the team’s front-line players.
Among those watching the action in civilian clothes will be quarterback Dru Brown, Most Outstanding Player award nominee Justin Hardy, the flashy Kalil Pimpleton, Bralon Addison, Devonte Dedmon, new offensive weapons Geno Lewis and William Stanback, most offensive- and defensive-line starters, Jovan Santos-Knox and Adarius “The Party Starter” Pickett.
What will be on display are fierce battles for the few available starting jobs, backup spots, practice-roster vacancies and even trying to be noticed by other CFL teams looking to fill holes.
“We bring in 85 guys, plus the non-counters, and on Day 1, I tell them, whether they make our roster or in the preseason, they need to perform so somebody else may see them and give them an opportunity,” head coach Bob Dyce said at TD Place on Thursday, the Redblacks’ first day back at home base after a training camp held at Queen’s University in Kingston.
“I’d love to see all these guys play in the league, whether it’s with us or somebody else. That’s our goal as coaches: prepare them, make these guys better players, so that they continue to to have opportunities.”
Talking to the team at Dyce’s request earlier in the day was defensive back Justin Howell, a former Carleton Raven who the Redblacks selected with their seventh-round pick (55th overall) in the 2018 draft and has been a mainstay since.
Dyce, who was the Redblacks special-teams coach then, remembers vividly how Howell performed that year in the pre-season finale against the Toronto Argonauts.
“It sticks in my mind,” Dyce said. “Justin went out, played on special teams and made the point that I had to go to the head coach (who was Rick Campbell, now Redblacks special-teams coach) and say, ‘We cannot release this guy.’
‘We want people who are going to control their future, and that’s what we’re looking for (Friday).”
Battle in the backfield
“Astute analysis” is what Dyce called an observation that the most hotly contested competition for starting jobs is in the Ottawa secondary.
Veteran Alonzo Addae is locked in at safety despite a good push from ex-B.C. Lion Charlie Ringland and fifth-round pick Eric Cumberbatch, both of whom will play Friday.
It also appears former Roughrider Amari Henderson will be one of the Redblacks’ halfbacks, but the other spot is still up for grabs.
So are the cornerback jobs, with ex-NFLers Gavin Heslop and Shakur Brown pushing veteran CFLers like Alijah McGhee and C.J. Coldon.
“It’s a very talented group,” Dyce said of the defensive backfield. “That’s why we wanted to see them all continue to play this week, to verify certain things that we think and give them another opportunity under the lights. There’s no lack of talent; there are so many good guys. We want to make sure to do the due diligence, so that, when we go to Week 1, we’ve got the right guys.”
Against the Alouettes, the depth chart from left to right shows Heslop and McGhee at one corner, former NFLer Craig James and ex-Argo Robert Priester at one halfback spot, returning veteran Deandre Lamont and former Calgary Stampeder Kenyon Reed in the other halfback slot, and eighth-round pick King Ambers with Brown and Coldon at the other corner.
Filling a hole
The Redblacks lost receiver Nick Mardner, their 6-6 first-round pick in 2024, to a torn patella tendon in Kingston.
That leaves 2025 first-rounder Keelan White, sixth-rounder Ethan Jordan and undrafted free agent Darius Simmons as the only Canadian receivers on a roster expected to start at least one.
White, who is not playing Friday, has impressed the coaching staff.
“We had a pretty good understanding of who he was as a person and as a player, and he comes as advertised,” Dyce said of the 6-foot-2 White, a North Vancouver product who played at the University of Montana. “I think if there’s anything that even impresses me more is his knowledge of the offence and how he takes things. He’s a professional. For a young guy, it sometimes takes a little bit of time, but it comes down to his splits. Tommy (Condell, offensive co-ordinator) has so many different variations and Keelan is on point at all times. You would think he was a CFL vet. There are different things with the roster that you can do, ratio-wise, so, as regrettable as what happened with Nick is, we feel comfortable with where we’re at.”
Backing up Brown
Veteran quarterback Matt Schiltz will make his Ottawa debut playing the first quarter on Friday, while Tyree Adams and Dustin Crum will split the rest of the game.
In Montreal last week, Shiltz completed eight of 11 passes for 72 yards, Crum was good on four of five throws for 22 yards and Adams connected on just one of two attempts for six yards.
“We’ve seen a lot of good things out of all three of them,” Dyce said. “And this is going to be another great opportunity for them to show how they’ve progressed in Tommy’s offence.”
Shiltz, a 32-year-old entering his seventh CFL season, played for Condell in 2022 and 2023 as a Ticat.
Asked what he wanted to accomplish Friday, Shiltz said: “The biggest thing, especially in these games, is getting in and out of the huddle, making sure everyone’s on the same page, getting into a little bit of a rhythm, and get the guys focused on their alignment and their assignment, focused on those little detail things. The offence can be a little bit complex for some rookies sometimes. So just make sure we get everybody on the same page and finish every drive with a kick.”
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.