Photo courtesy: Maggie Stemp-Turner/3DownNation. All rights reserved.

The Calgary Stampeders might have been the CFL’s most improved team in 2025, but there is still work to be done in the medical tent.

Addressing the media during locker room clean-out day, head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson touted the improvements made by his organization following a flurry of player criticism last year. However, he appeared disappointed that those changes haven’t translated into improved athlete availability.

“As an organization, I felt like we did a lot of things to help our players feel like they’re important. I felt like that came down to the way we changed a lot about our club here — our weight room, our food, the turf was new, the way that I think our ownership made connections with our players,” Dickenson said.

“Where we need to improve, honestly, is I do think for some reason we got a lot of injuries — too many. We’ve got to look at why. Instead of just saying, ‘Oh, it happens in sports,’ we’ve got to try to figure out why, because we did lead the league in most games injured. I think if we’re doing our job, we’ve got to try to figure out how to lower that number, because it’s hard to just keep bringing more guys in and more guys in, and believing that the standard of play will be the same.”

The Stampeders completed a spectacular turnaround in 2025, going from last place a year ago to a playoff team with 11 wins under their belt. However, they did so while having the most man games lost to injury of any CFL team, finishing with 285. The Saskatchewan Roughriders were the only other playoff team to suffer more than 200, but still had 36 fewer than Calgary.

Among the key losses this season were star receiver Reggie Begelton and difference-making pass rusher Folarin Orimolade, though the bigger issue was the number of players with nagging issues who were coming in and out of the lineup. 21 players were listed as being affected by some form of injury in practice in the week leading up to their playoff game, seven of whom played. A whopping 26 players were on either the one- or six-game injured list for Saturday’s West Semi-Final loss to the B.C. Lions, just four of whom could be considered healthy scratches.

“We finished the year as the most injured team in the league, and yet, guys had no excuses,” Dickenson remarked. “They just did the next man up type of thing. ‘Give me my opportunity. I’ll work my tail off to get back as soon as I can.’”

This isn’t the first time that injury management has been raised as an issue for the Stampeders. In July of 2023, Dickenson publicly ripped his squad for having too many minor injuries, pointing the finger at the players for not taking proper care of their bodies during off-hours. However, former running back Ka’Deem Carey suggested ahead of the 111th Grey Cup that a sub-par training staff is what kept him from staying on the field during his time with the organization — one of the reasons he was allowed to leave for Toronto.

While injuries do sometimes provide salary cap relief, particularly when major contracts spend time on the six-game, they often affect players’ livelihoods in the long run. Dickenson acknowledged that projected availability will continue to play a role in determining which players are brought back this offseason.

“We have a chunk of guys in their 30s that some of them got hurt and were unable to be with us,” he admitted. “We’re gonna have some tough decisions.”

Calgary received a C+ grade for their training and medical staff in the Canadian Football League Players’ Association’s inaugural report card last December, which ranked seventh out of nine teams. Head athletic therapist Stephen Wady has been with the organization for 10 years and won a Grey Cup in 2018 as an assistant, before being promoted to the top job ahead of the 2022 season.

While Dickenson did not call out the training staff by name, it will presumably fall on their shoulders to work with him on a way to mitigate the injury issues going forward. Despite all the changes made this year, there is still work to be done if the Stampeder hope to break a six-season drought of playoff victories.

“There are always areas to improve,” he said. “I do feel like we all should look in the mirror, myself included, and make sure the next time we’re on the field, we do the best job we can.”