Landry's 5 takeaways from Week 7

Hello, Trevor Harris. It’s been good, for years, your game has. But I don’t know if it’s ever been this good.

So how about it? Five more years? Maybe 10?

They say life begins at 40, so, are you in? Damon Allen was 44 when he played his last game. Just putting it out there.

Here are the Week 7 takeaways.

A FAST START IS COOL BUT THERE’S SOMETHING EVEN BETTER THAN THAT

So, the Saskatchewan Roughriders were a little miffed that the Calgary Stampeders could spend a crappy night, four to a dorm room, and then push them around on their own field the next day.

Even though the sleep-deprived Stampeders offered up two big turnovers early in that game, the Riders found themselves down 7-3 after a quarter in that one.

A mission statement, then, was to get off to a fast start in Vancouver, against the BC Lions. “That’s something that we preached, from the top down,” receiver Dohnte Meyers told TSN after the game.

Mission accomplished. Twice.

The Roughriders marched their opening drive 80 yards, on five plays, for a touchdown and a 7-nothing lead.

They marched their opening drive of the second half 66 yards on four plays and scored a major there too, to take a 30-11 lead.

The Riders grabbed control with that first touchdown, and tightened their grip with the second.

Because two fast starts are better than one.

IT’S OFFICIAL: THIS IS A RENAISSANCE

Say, friend, have you been waiting for the Calgary Stampeders to crash out and resemble the group that finished the last two seasons with 11 wins in 36 games?

Go home. That bus ain’t comin’.

With a 21-point home field win over Winnipeg in Week 5, followed by a road win in Regina last week, and now an impressive, 21-point Week 7 road win in Winnipeg, we have more than enough on aggregate to pronounce the 2025 Calgary Stampeders as the real deal.

Can they go worst to first when all is said and done?

That’s to be determined with a lot of football yet to be played, of course.

But right now, the Calgary Stampeders are the standard by which all others are measured.

Been awhile since we’ve seen that.

SOMETIMES YOU GET SO FAR BEHIND YOU’RE FORCED TO ABANDON THE PASS

A funny, non-conventional wisdom thing happened on the way to Montreal’s 26-25 win over the Toronto Argonauts.

The Alouettes got so far behind they were forced to run the football in order to play catch-up, if you can believe it.

Montreal’s first 16 plays from scrimmage were all passes. And what did they have to show for it?

An 18-4 deficit, with two and a half minutes left in the first half.

The Als took the ball next at their own 46-yard line and proceeded to rush five straight times, and six of eight times, overall, on a field goal drive that got them a little closer at the half.

When the night was over, the Als rushed 16 times for 84 yards, including quarterback Davis Alexander’s 10-yard touchdown run on the clinching score with less than two minutes left in the game.

Conventional wisdom? It can be a little overrated.

YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A FLYING RUNNING BACK

When it happened, I felt a little shock wave ripple through my nervous system.

Did I — did I just — see that?

“This must be exactly what it feels like when a wildlife biologist spots what’s thought to be an extinct species in the wild,” I thought.

On Saturday night, Lions’ running back James Butler took a hand off on third-and-one and soared over top of the turbulence below to collect three yards and a first down.

The dive play! It’s alive!

And it was beautiful. There was Butler collecting the football, charging forward, and propelling himself into the sky via a two-foot takeoff. He stretched out as he got airborne and horizontal and landed in a spot over the linemen and at the feet of the linebackers before they could react in any meaningful way to stop it.

A beautiful football thing when it unfolded live, it was absolutely gorgeous when we got to view it in slo-mo, seconds later.

When we talk about the typical, modern, short yardage battle, we talk about the calamity of the mass of bodies colliding in tight space, and a ball carrier trying to muster all the brute force he possibly can to wriggle and barge through any little fissure in that pile of humanity.

Nothing wrong with all that but why not say “screw the door, there’s a window right there” more often?

On Saturday night, that play got me smiling just like Sam Neill smiled in the original Jurassic Park when he first looked out of the Jeep and saw a brontosaurus, right there in front of him.

So nice to see you, dive play. I’ve missed you.

WE HAVE SEPARATION

A third of the way through the 2025 season, we have a pretty clear picture of the categories of the current trajectories of all nine CFL clubs. Note that I wrote “current” trajectories. These are not necessarily “projected.”

In the “Trans-Lunar Injection” category — teams that have broken orbit and are currently heading to the moon — we have the Calgary Stampeders the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, all teams that are doing things very well and consistently.

In the “Earth Orbit” category, we find the Montreal Alouettes, Winnipeg Blue Bombers and BC Lions, all teams in decent positions but still endeavouring to get through everything on their checklists before they are ready to join the other three with a TLI booster rocket firing.

In the “Hold On The Launchpad” category are the Toronto Argonauts, Edmonton Elks and Ottawa REDBLACKS, three teams that are a collective 3-and-15, with just one win apiece. Can they get things in order to get their launch sequence rolling?

AND FINALLY… It’s not supposed to be this easy, Damien Alford.

Landry’s 5 takeaways from Week 7

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