The six-foot, 192-pound Ford joined Hamilton as a free agent this off-season and has completed eight-of-13 passes for 59 yards with an interception in spot duty with the club. The Niagara Falls, Ont., native served as Jake Dolegala\u2019s backup in last week\u2019s 38-7 road loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the Ticats\u2019 first game without star quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Mitchell, 36, suffered an ankle injury in Hamilton\u2019s 14-13 home loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on July 5 that required surgery. <\/p>\n
The six-foot-seven, 242-pound Dolegala was 17-of-30 passing for 122 yards and one interception versus Saskatchewan while rushing eight times for 33 yards. Ford saw late action, completing five-of-six passes for 47 yards and rushing twice for 24 yards.<\/p>\n
Both Ford and Dolegala took snaps against Winnipeg following Mitchell\u2019s injury. Ford finished three-of-seven passing for 12 yards with an interception while Dolegala had no completions in his two attempts.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust looking for a spark,\u201d Hamilton head coach Scott Milanovich said regarding the change. \u201cIt\u2019s no blame on Jake.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously Tre has a different skill set that we\u2019re looking forward to trying to utilize this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ford is 10-13 as a CFL starter, having completed 367-of-547 passes (67.1 per cent) for 4,710 yards with 29 TDs and 20 interceptions. But he has also run 128 times for 1,176 yards (9.2-yard average) and four touchdowns.<\/p>\n
Ford\u2019s mobility can give opposing defences fits. But it also means Hamilton\u2019s receivers must sometimes adjust on the fly.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Ford) can escape the pocket,\u201d Milanovich said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve got to kind of join the party if we\u2019re away from where he\u2019s rotating or rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The good news for the Ticats is they could practise outdoors Friday. Granted, it was just a walk-through, but all of their other sessions were indoors due to poor air quality.<\/p>\n
Toronto held its walk-through Friday indoors at Guelph, Ont., due to the air quality.<\/p>\n
But Ford downplayed the impact of not having full, traditional practices under his belt before Saturday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always a little bit more tempo, a little more energy on game day \u2026 it\u2019s definitely a different feeling,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have experienced guys who\u2019ve played football so those timing things, I think, it\u2019s going to take maybe a little bit to figure out but I think we\u2019re going to figure it out pretty fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Veteran Hamilton linebacker Wynton McManis will face his former team for the first time. McManis helped Toronto win two Grey Cups over his four seasons there before joining the Ticats in the off-season. He has 10 tackles and an interception in two games.<\/p>\n
Both the CFL and CFLPA continue to monitor the situation in Hamilton. Should the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI+) reach eight or higher either during the warm-up or the actual game, both teams will be sent to their dressing room until the situation improves. <\/p>\n
However, with wind gusts up to 53 kilometres an hour and a 90 per cent chance of afternoon rain in Saturday\u2019s forecast, there\u2019s optimism regarding game-day conditions.<\/p>\n
Toronto will be without returner\/receiver Janarion Grant (knee) and punter John Haggerty (hamstring) Saturday while Canadian linebacker Cameron Judge (head\/hamstring) will miss a second straight start. Grant has 18 punt returns for 271 yards and one touchdown and 15 kickoff returns for 348 yards and stands third in CFL history with 13 career return TDs.<\/p>\n
Haggerty leads the league in punting (52-yard average) and net (40.8). Global James Burnip, acquired recently from Ottawa, will replace Haggerty.<\/p>\n
Toronto quarterback Chad Kelly leads the CFL in passing (1,804 yards) and is tied for tops with 14 TD strikes. He also boasts a 4-2 record versus Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Receiver Makai Polk has 10 catches for 196 yards and three TDs in his last two games. Rookie Tyler Kahmann has five touchdown grabs in as many career CFL games.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2026.<\/p>\n
Dan Ralph, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The six-foot, 192-pound Ford joined Hamilton as a free agent this off-season and has completed eight-of-13 passes for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-808913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808913","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=808913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}