Happy holidays friends!

With the festive season in full swing, and with 2026 fast approaching, CFL.ca has been rolling out all kinds of great year-end content over the last few weeks. There will be plenty of time to preview free agency and the CFL Draft, but we also need to pay homage to what was an outstanding season.

With that in mind, and with a little holiday flare, here are a few gifts teams received over the course of 2025.

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ANOTHER YEAR OF TREVOR HARRIS FOR THE ROUGHRIDERS

 

I mean, let’s be honest: the best thing Saskatchewan received in 2025 was the 112th Grey Cup. But that was no gift. The Roughriders were the league’s best team from wire to wire and raised their game to another level in a pair of playoff wins. That wouldn’t have happened without quarterback Trevor Harris at the helm.

And while retirement was contemplated, Harris gave fans in Regina an early gift when he signed on for another year earlier this month. Culminating with Grey Cup MVP honours, it’s hard to argue 2025 was the best year of Harris’s career. During the regular season, Harris led the league by completing 73.6 per cent of his passes while recording 4,549 passing yards, 24 touchdowns, and a 110.7 quarterback rating.

SEAN WHYTE’S HISTORIC SEASON FOR THE LIONS

 

The Lions surged to an 11-7 record in 2025 for many reasons, and the work of Sean Whyte was undoubtedly one of them. The league’s number one scoring offence was helped along by Whyte making 39 of 41 field tries, which translated to a spectacular 95.1 per cent accuracy rate.

Already the owner of three of the 10 most accurate campaigns in league history, Whyte’s season goes down as the second best we’ve ever seen. The only kicker with a more accurate year than what we just saw from Whyte came from Ottawa’s Lewis Ward in 2018 at 98.1 per cent. Oh, and Whyte got his signature moment, too, when he booted the game winner as time expired in the Western Semi-Final.

KENNY LAWLER IN FREE AGENCY FOR THE TIGER-CATS

 

Expectations were high when the Ticats signed Kenny Lawler to a two-year contract in February. And he absolutely shattered them. In his first year with Hamilton, Lawler led the league with a career high 14 touchdown catches while finishing second overall with 1,443 receiving yards. The fit with quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell felt like it was meant to be.

And with Mitchell back for two more years (another holiday present), that connection is set to continue in 2026. Lawler was Mitchell’s number one target last season, looking his way 144 times overall. And I guess it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Hamilton also led the league with 36 passing touchdowns.

A TIMELY DAVIS ALEXANDER RETURN FOR THE ALOUETTES

 

The Als were 3-0 and looked like a legitimate powerhouse when Davis Alexander went down with injury in late June. When he returned for Week 17, Montreal was a .500 team trying to scratch out an East Division playoff spot and get on some sort of roll down the stretch. Thanks in large part to Alexander, the Alouettes accomplished both goals and then some.

Montreal rattled off three straight wins upon Alexander’s return to the lineup, clinched second in the East, and entered the playoffs with a ton of momentum. Alexander was then outstanding in a pair of playoff wins, throwing for 594 yards and recording three touchdowns before finally being slowed down in a hard-fought Grey Cup loss.

A RETURN TO THE PLAYOFFS FOR THE STAMPEDERS

 

After two miserable seasons where the Stamps won a combined 11 games and saw their run of consecutive playoff appearances end at 19, optimism was high entering 2025. Calgary had shuffled their coaching staff, acquired star quarterback Vernon Adams Jr., and overhauled their defensive personnel. It was clear the prior two years simply weren’t acceptable.

And then the team got off to a stellar start. With wins in five of their first six, the Stampeders set the tone for a successful season early on. En route to an 11-7 finish, Adams Jr. lived up to expectations while new stars like Jaylon Hutchings, Dedrick Mills, and Clarence Hicks emerged. In the end, Calgary just narrowly missed their first playoff win since 2018 with a last minute loss in the Western Semi-Final.