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<\/p>\n\u201cHe has played good football,\u201d Dinwiddie said \u201cObviously last year was a tough year for him with injuries and how the season laid itself out. There are things we have to work on, absolutely, but I think he can give us a chance to win football games.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
Ottawa (4-14) finished fourth in the East Division and missed the CFL playoffs last year. Then again, so did Toronto (5-13) after winning two Grey Cups the four previous seasons under Dinwiddie.<\/p>\n
Backup Dustin Crum, who made six starts last year and completed 70.9 per cent of his passes while rushing for 429 yards and 11 TDs, is slated to become a free agent next month. Dinwiddie would like to keep Crum in the Canadian capital.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t had a chance to coach him but I think he has the skill set you need to be successful in this league,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the price is right and he wants to come back and have an opportunity to compete, I\u2019d love that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
NUMBERS GAME: The decision to release American defensive lineman Casey Sayles still isn\u2019t sitting well with Orlondo Steinauer.<\/p>\n
Hamilton let Sayles go last week after three seasons, a decision Steinauer, the Ticats president of football operations, says wasn\u2019t football-related.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sucks, that\u2019s what it does,\u201d Steinauer said frankly. \u201cCasey has a lot of good ball ahead of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to make everything fit, that\u2019s the bottom line and so I\u2019d say this erred more on financial than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sayles, 30, appeared in 51 regular-season games with Hamilton, recording 122 tackles, 18 sacks, and one forced fumble.<\/p>\n
Ticats defensive lineman Julian Howsare was the East Division\u2019s top defensive player last year with 43 tackles, a career-best 13 sacks, one interception, and two forced fumbles in his seventh CFL season. Steinauer said Howsare is one of many players Hamilton wants back in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got offers out there to a lot of different people right now,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes it happens quick, sometimes they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cJulian is definitely somebody we\u2019d like to have back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ditto for backup quarterback Taylor Powell, another of Hamilton\u2019s pending free agents. Powell made nine starts as a rookie in 2023 but hasn\u2019t seen much action the last two seasons behind veteran Bo Levi Mitchell.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaylor has proven he can start games in this league and be extremely effective,\u201d Steinauer said. \u201cThe fact we want Taylor back speaks volumes and we\u2019d expect if anything happened to Bo that he\u2019d step in \u2026 and there\u2019s not a lot of drop-off.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
FORD STILL AN ELK: Quarterback Tre Ford is still with the Edmonton Elks and GM Ed Hervey isn\u2019t discounting the possibility the former Waterloo Warrior remains with the CFL club in 2026.<\/p>\n
Edmonton signed Ford, of Niagara Falls, Ont., to a three-year extension last season to be the club\u2019s starter. But the \u201921 Hec Crighton Trophy winner was just 1-4 in five starts before being replaced by veteran Cody Fajardo.<\/p>\n
Edmonton signed Fajardo through 2026, creating questions regarding Ford\u2019s future with the CFL club. Hervey said Monday he\u2019s yet to receive trade offers for Ford because the Elks haven\u2019t formally placed the 27-year-old quarterback on the open market.<\/p>\n
And Hervey made it clear no decision on Ford\u2019s future in Edmonton has been made yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the best thing would be to talk with him first,\u201d Hervey told reporters Monday during a CFL Zoom call. \u201cI think he\u2019s owed that level of respect to at least talk about it and see what his thoughts are on his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe conversation I had with him before he left was to talk in general about the situation, the changes, and things to improve on, but we never really got into 2026. I\u2019d like to have a chance to talk with him and his representative about that to make certain that whatever decision is made he\u2019s involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmonton selected the six-foot-one, 195-pound Ford in the first round, eighth overall, in the 2022 CFL draft. His best season was 2023 when he threw for 2,069 yards with 12 TDs and six interceptions, while rushing 66 times for 622 yards (9.4-yard average) with three touchdowns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all like Tre,\u201d Hervey said. \u201cTre is a good individual, he\u2019s a good person, and he didn\u2019t do anything wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be unfair to speculate as to what we want to do with him because we haven\u2019t had a chance to talk. We\u2019ve given him some time during the holidays to absorb everything. I\u2019d like to have that conversation with him before determining what we\u2019re going to do beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 12, 2026.<\/p>\n
Dan Ralph, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe has played good football,\u201d Dinwiddie said \u201cObviously last year was a tough year for him with injuries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-406221","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\/406221","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=406221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}