{"id":171283,"date":"2026-08-17T18:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T18:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/171283\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T18:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T18:20:08","slug":"montreal-alouettes-can-clinch-first-place-as-early-as-week-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/171283\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal Alouettes can clinch first place as early as Week 14"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMontreal Alouettes<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve only just reached the midway point of the CFL season, but the Montreal Alouettes can mathematically clinch first place in the East Division within the next three weeks.<\/p>\n

The club is set to host the Ottawa Redblacks on Thursday night, a game they\u2019re currently favoured to win by 12.5 points<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Montreal is 8-1, while the Redblacks are the tenth team in league history to start the season 0-9<\/a>. Ottawa has also lost 15 consecutive games dating back to last year, setting a modern CFL record<\/a> for longest losing skid.<\/p>\n

\u2191 what lands at 3 p.m. daily<\/p>\n

3DownNation Newsletter<\/p>\n

\t\tLatest news, exclusive analysis, and more daily at 3 p.m.<\/p>\n

\t\tLatest news, exclusive analysis, and more daily at 3 p.m.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tFree. Unsubscribe anytime. By signing up you agree to receive daily emails from 3DownNation,
\n\t\t\tas well as our terms of service<\/a> and
\n\t\t\tprivacy policy<\/a>.
\n\t\t\t1900 Rose St, Regina SK S4P 0A9.<\/p>\n

If the Alouettes win this week, which seems highly likely, they\u2019d then need to beat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (5-4) and B.C. Lions (4-5) to improve to 11-1 by Week 14.<\/p>\n

In order to clinch first place by that point in time, Montreal would need four other games to go their way.<\/p>\n

Three of them are simple: the Toronto Argonauts (4-5) have to lose.<\/p>\n

Fresh off a 42-12 loss to Edmonton, the Double Blue are scheduled to play the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (4-6) twice and Saskatchewan Roughriders (6-3) once over the next three weeks. If the team loses all three contests, they would fall to 4-8, rendering them unable to catch Montreal.<\/p>\n

The other result the Alouettes need is a Tiger-Cats loss to the Calgary Stampeders (4-6) in Week 13.<\/p>\n

Two wins over Toronto and a loss to Calgary would give Hamilton a 6-7 record. Given that the Tabbies have already lost to Montreal twice this year, this would leave them unable to catch the Alouettes by virtue of the season series.<\/p>\n

Obviously, nobody knows how the next three weeks will play out. After all, this is the Canadian Football League \u2014 weird things happen all the time.<\/p>\n

However, it seems notable that the Alouettes could wrap-up the East Division with seven weeks left on the schedule. The exact date would be Monday, Sept. 7, which is Labour Day.<\/p>\n

The last time a team locked up the East Division so early was 2023, when the Argonauts did so on Sept. 15 in Week 15. Coincidentally, they clinched first place with a win over Montreal.<\/p>\n

Toronto was 11-1 at the time. Due to a scheduling quirk, the team had all three of its bye weeks before Labour Day that season, so it took 15 weeks to play 12 games.<\/p>\n

It may also be time to question how many games Montreal can win this year. The team could easily be 9-0, were it not for a controversial overtime call against Edmonton<\/a> back in June.<\/p>\n

No team in CFL history has ever finished better than 16-2, and the Alouettes could still mathematically finish 17-1. However, given that the team could play several meaningless games down the stretch, this seems unlikely.<\/p>\n

Only two teams have ever finished 16-2 in the CFL: Edmonton in 1989 and the aforementioned Argonauts in 2023. Curiously, neither of these teams reached the Grey Cup, losing by double digits in the West and East Finals, respectively.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, one might argue the Alouettes would be best-served losing at least two more games before the 2026 regular-season comes to a close.<\/p>\n

Montreal has recent experience with this very phenomenon. Montreal was the team that dominated the Argonauts in the East Final in 2023, then upset Winnipeg to win the Grey Cup.<\/p>\n

One year later, the Alouettes had the best record in the CFL at 12-5-1 but lost the East Final to a scrappy Toronto team, which then went on to win a championship of its own.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that there is no best path to the Grey Cup, though a first-place finish is certainly the shortest.<\/p>\n

With three more wins and a little bit of luck, the Alouettes could clinch exactly that in just three more weeks.<\/p>\n

The Montreal Alouettes (8-1) will host the Ottawa Redblacks (0-9) at Percival Molson Stadium on Thursday, August 20 with kickoff scheduled for 7:30 p.m. EDT. Last week, the Redblacks extended their modern CFL record losing streak to 15 games, while the Alouettes were on bye.<\/p>\n

The weather forecast in Montreal calls for 23 degrees and a mix of sun and cloud. The game will be broadcast on TSN and RDS in Canada, CBS Sports Network in the United States, and CFL+ internationally. Radio listeners can tune-in on TSN 1200 in Ottawa or TSN 690 (English) or 99.5 Montreal (French) in Montreal.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

John Hodge is a longtime Canadian football reporter, insider, and podcaster for 3DownNation. Based in Winnipeg, Hodge is also a freelance television and radio broadcaster and curling reporter for Rock Channel.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Montreal Alouettes We\u2019ve only just reached the midway point of the CFL season, but the Montreal Alouettes can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[349,350,1192,351,352,17170,354,50,17176],"class_list":["post-171283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-alouettes","tag-canadian","tag-cfl","tag-davis-alexander","tag-football","tag-montreal","tag-tyson-philpot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}