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Published Oct 27, 2025  • 3 minute read
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Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ Cam Allen tackles Montreal Alouettes’ Austin Mack during first half CFL action in Winnipeg on Oct. 25, 2025. Photo by John Woods /The Canadian PressArticle content
They’ve gone through the front door as the top dog in the West and they’ve done it through the back door as the division’s underdog.
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This time, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers will try to reach the Grey Cup through the treacherous tunnel of the crossover playoff spot.
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It’s a route fraught with booby traps and littered with the corpses of wanna-be heroes of the past.
A dozen teams have tried to navigate it since the passageway was created in 1996, but not a single one has emerged from the other end: Seven got buried in the East semifinal, the other five in the final.
It’s not like most of the games are close, either.
The average margin of defeat in those seven semifinals is nearly 21 points.
The five teams that escaped the semi lost by an average of nearly 17 the following week.
Why it’s so difficult is a bit perplexing. It’s just two road games, perhaps with a little more travel than a western team would have in the comfort of its own division.
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The incentive for Winnipeg is enormous and obvious: The lure of playing a championship game on home turf.
You could make the argument the Bombers are as well-positioned as anyone ever has been to pull it off.
They’ll start the journey on Saturday in Montreal, a team they went 2-0 against this season, including that preseason-flavoured 19-10 affair this past weekend.
If they emerge from there, they go to Hamilton with that tasty, 40-3 pasting of the Tiger-Cats just a month ago still relatively fresh in the mouths of both teams.
The Bombers went 6-2 against the East this season and just 4-6 against the West, so they’ve got that going for them, too,
They also have a slew of veterans who’ll remember the underdog run that kicked off this streak of five straight Grey Cup appearances.
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Those Bombers had posted an 11-7 record and were bolstered by the late-season trade for Zach Collaros, with CFL sophomore Chris Streveler providing the ultimate change of pace at quarterback.
In a cruel twist, Streveler appears to be out of the mix after what looked like another devastating knee injury on Saturday, leaving most of the weight on the 37-year-old shoulders of Collaros.
Can No. 8 create some late-career magic the way he did when he came to Winnipeg off the league scrap heap six years ago?
Bet against him, if you like.
The odds against Collaros pulling this off over the next three weeks aren’t piled as high as they were in 2019.
He was all but written off at the time, injury-prone and past his prime, they said.
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His team caught magic in a bottle, though, resulting in a beer-soaked celebration that put Winnipeg’s 28-year Grey Cup drought on ice.
It was all on the road, too: A West semifinal in Calgary against a 12-6 Stamps squad, a nail-biting, crossbar-hitting final in Regina against the 13-5 Riders, and a return to Cowtown for the championship game against 15-3 Hamilton.
When the dust settled the scoreboard read 33-12, Winnipeg, and how many saw that coming?
This team will stack its wobbly 10-8 mark against the 10-8 Alouettes and, maybe, the 11-7 Tiger-Cats.
It scored 14 more points and allowed six less than Montreal over the regular season.
Hamilton is a completely different animal, outscoring the Bombers by 66 but giving up an additional 72.
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But first things, first.
Looking back at the season series between Winnipeg and Montreal only provides half a glimpse, but it’s a revealing half.
Brady Oliveira’s only 200-yard game of the season, rushing and receiving, combined, came in Montreal back in August, when he rolled to 137 on the ground and 73 through the air.
The Bombers won, 26-13.
Neither team dressed all its starters this past weekend, so take Winnipeg’s win with a tablespoon of salt.
Most notably absent from the lineups were Collaros and his Montreal counterpart, Davis Alexander.
But Alexander was injured and didn’t play that game in August, either. So the Bombers will get their first look at the CFL record-setter in a do-or-die setting.
That’s the wildcard matchup in Saturday’s playoff game: The wily vet Collaros against a 27-year-old with just 11 CFL starts under his belt – all of them wins. Nobody’s ever done that before.
Just like nobody’s ever crossed over and got to the Grey Cup.
Ending both streaks is a lot to ask.
It’s up to the Bombers to answer.
paul.friesen@kleinmedia.ca
X: @friesensunmedia
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