The Montreal Alouettes\u2019 season was a rollercoaster at times, but when they got healthy, they were clearly one of the best teams in the CFL. They overcame adversity in the playoffs to make it to the 112th Grey Cup, but that\u2019s where their season came to a halt. The Als dropped a 25-17 decision to the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
This game isn\u2019t hard to break down. It came down to turnovers. The Alouettes gave the Riders the ball four times (three interceptions, one fumble), while Saskatchewan didn\u2019t turn the ball over once.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating,\u201d special teams captain Alex Gagne said after the game. \u201cWe weren\u2019t expecting to end up with the result we got. We had great chemistry in this locker room. Last year, we talked about the same thing. Even though we gave the Argonauts the ball often (in last year\u2019s Eastern Final), we stayed in the game because we kept working. That\u2019s what happened (on Sunday). We didn\u2019t start off well, but we kept ourselves in the game. We believed until the very end.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Canadian football, the team that usually makes the fewest mistakes wins the game. And to overcome those mistakes, you need to be close to perfect down the stretch if you\u2019re going to come back to win.
That didn\u2019t happen for the Alouettes on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll be a long off-season of reflecting and thinking of what could\u2019ve been for most of the Alouettes.
But nobody can deny that the foundation is in place to have sustained success for a good while.
Quarterback Davis Alexander just turned 27 years old in October. He\u2019s already established himself as arguably the best player at his position in the CFL, and he\u2019s under contract for two more years.
All-CFL receiver Tyler Snead signed a contract extension during the season, and several other key pieces are under contract for 2026.<\/p>\n
As is the case with every CFL team, general manager Danny Maciocia will have some work to do. There are key free agents that can potentially hit the market in February, including starting left guard Pier-Olivier Lestage, receiver Tyson Philpot, linebacker Darnell Sankey, and others.
The roster will change in 2026. That much is inevitable, but the core and culture that has been built with the Als won\u2019t be any different.<\/p>\n
Is the Grey Cup loss tough to swallow? Absolutely. But what the front office has built is special and it should lead to more success in the coming years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Alouettes\u2019 season was a rollercoaster at times, but when they got healthy, they were clearly one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-289654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}