Hello, Dejon Brissett.
What’s your hype song? Aerosmith’s ‘Livin’ On The Edge’?
Don’t worry. Since you’re on a bye, it’ll be a whole week before your teammates can razz you about the razor you did not need to dance on at the end of Monday’s game.
OK TIRE LABOUR DAY WEEKEND
» 3 stats that defined Toronto’s OK Tire Labour Day Weekend win over Hamilton
» 3 stats that defined Saskatchewan’s OK Tire Labour Day Weekend win over Winnipeg
» 3 stats that defined Calgary’s OK Tire Labour Day Weekend win over Edmonton
» 5 questions coming out of OK Tire Labour Day Weekend
» Sign up and watch CFL games on CFL+ in the U.S. and Internationally
And even when they do, you can merely say “uh, rewind that tape a few seconds” and freeze it at the moment you pulled down one of the year’s most ridiculous catches.
Never has a game’s most spectacular play been so close to also being its, umm, most unfortunate.
Here are the OK Tire Labour Day Weekend takeaways.
A GAME CAN BE JUST LIKE AN AIR POPPER
Ever watch popcorn pop in an air popper?
The kernels bounce around a little while dancing on the air and that’s interesting enough to watch. Then, a few kernels start to pop, one every fews seconds. Then, BAM. They come fast and furious.
A game, apparently, can be just like that.
The Winnipeg-Saskatchewan tilt was that way, with interesting plays dotted in throughout but then came the last five minutes.
A big punt return becomes a turnover. Pop. A rocket of a pass to the corner of the end zone cuts the home team’s lead to a touchdown. Pop.
A third and six gamble becomes a quarterback quick kick. Pop. That QB kick is so good it leads to a single. No, wait! A safety. No, a single. Pop, Pop.
A third-and-14 bomb by the trailers is incomplete but, no, it’s pass interference and then a Winnipeg touchdown pass cuts the lead to two. Pop, pop, pop.
A wide open receiver is about to convert for two and tie the game but Saskatchewan defensive back Tevaughn Campbell leaves a vapour trail behind him as he blazes in to pick the pass off and return it the length of the field for two more Saskatchewan points. POP.
The officials have to physically peel away players, one by one, to see who has recovered an onside kick with 30 seconds left to play.
Popcorn all over the place.
“They don’t call it the Labour Day Classic for nothin’,” said Roughriders’ quarterback Trevor Harris afterward.
The hot-buttered Labour Day Classic.
BONUS TAKEAWAY: Hamilton/Toronto? Pop, pop, POPPITY-POP-POP.
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In all the frenetic, gorgeous chaos of the Argos/Ticats game, it could easily get lost; It appears Toronto has an answer to their season-long running back woes and that answer arrived from the Edmonton Elks in return for a conditional eighth round draft pick less than a month ago.
Not that it’s a mistake made by the Elks. They’ve got plenty of running back stardom on the roster already.
But Spencer Brown celebrated Labour Day by handling a big workload for the Argos, with 19 touches for a combined 154 yards, including 10 rushes for 90 yards — one of them a 27-yard rip — making it easily the best game for a Toronto running back in 2025.
Brown looked like he might be ready for prime time a week prior when, in his second game, he ran the ball 19 times for 85 yards in a win over BC, but a lot of those yards came late in a Toronto romp.
On Labour Day, it was a stem to stern effort. Brown made it look like the “conditional” part of the trade might well send that draft pick going the Elks’ way higher.
HALFTIME ADJUSTMENTS? THEY JUST GET MEANER IS ALL
Calgary’s win over Edmonton answered a question I’d never even knew I had rolling around in my head.
What would it look like if Cody Fajardo had to try and escape from the vortex of a tornado?
The Stampeders’ defence was relentless, blowing holes in Fajardo’s protective cocoon all game long, forcing the veteran pivot to abandon the pocket time and time and time again. When he wasn’t able to, he got blasted. Even when he was able to, he got blasted.
Calgary’s D was particularly nasty in the second half, a habit that has grabbed some attention.
“We just have a renewed focus,” said defensive lineman Folarin Orimolade when asked what adjustments to strategy were made at the break.
“From there we come in and step on people.”
Then he laughed. Because dominating is fun. Being a Stampeder right now is fun.
“We’re not re-inventing the wheel when we go in the locker room,” added Orimolade.
“It’s just what we do.”
EVEN IN THE MIDST OF ALL THAT IS SPECTACULAR, IT CAN BE THE SUBTLE THING THAT WEIGHS SO HEAVY
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As mentioned above, one of those popping kernels at Mosaic Stadium was Tevaughn Campbell’s interception on Winnipeg’s bid to tie the game on a two point convert, with 30 seconds left to play.
As the play unfolded, I saw Bombers’ receiver Dalton Schoen break open in the end zone towards the top of my TV screen and I thought “they’ve got it.”
And if something else, almost imperceptible, hadn’t happened on that play, Winnipeg quarterback Zach Collaros might well have zip-lined that pass straight to Schoen for two and a tie, with even a speedster like Campbell unable to close quite in time.
ALMOST imperceptible, I said.
Saskatchewan head coach Corey Mace noticed it, of course, and gave post-game credit to defensive lineman Habakkuk Baldonado, who blasted off the line and around the corner at the snap, getting between the quarterback and Schoen just as Collaros was launching.
“Got him to put a little more air underneath the ball,” said Mace of the second-year lineman’s rush, “with pressure in his face.”
And Campbell had time to swoop in.
ONE MAN’S AGGRESSIVENESS IS ANOTHER MAN’S STUPIDITY
You might think a team ought to go for it on third-and-goal from the two-yard line after collecting a turnover at the five moments prior to that.
But Winnipeg head coach Mike O’Shea opted to take a chip shot field goal, during the second quarter, with his team up by a seven-nothing score.
“They turn the ball over, we’re gonna take points,” O’Shea said after his team’s 34-30 loss.
Pressed on the matter, O’Shea replied it might have been different had it been goal-to-go at the one, or if it hadn’t been so early in the game.
“Points in the game, where we’re at, what the score is,” the two-time Coach Of The Year said. “It all factors in.”
After a very stout Saskatchewan defence stymied two Winnipeg run plays, one from the five and one from the three, O’Shea was in no mood to possibly fritter away all the house money the Bombers were playing with after the gift of a fumble recovery.
“There’s aggressiveness and there’s stupidity,” he said.
This one maybe should be filed under the category “You Say Tomato….”
AND FINALLY: “The guys don’t wanna come out. That’s a sign that they know that every snap is important. They like football. They play the game the right way.” — Calgary coach Dave Dickenson.