Ottawa Redblacks: Why winning is secondary in CFL pre-season finale
Completing their exhibition schedule with an unblemished record will not be the priority for the Ottawa Redblacks on Friday.
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Sure they'd like to beat the Montreal Alouettes for the second week in a row — all proud professional athletes want to win every game they play — but the coaching staff is more concerned with determining the roster for a game just six days later, when the Redblacks kick off the Canadian Football League's 2025 schedule in Regina against the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
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That means fans at TD Place for Ottawa's first home game since last season's Week 21, 37-31 victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats will not see most of the team's front-line players.
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Among those watching the action in civilian clothes will be quarterback Dru Brown, Most Outstanding Player award nominee Justin Hardy, the flashy Kalil Pimpleton, Bralon Addison, Devonte Dedmon, new offensive weapons Geno Lewis and William Stanback, most offensive- and defensive-line starters, Jovan Santos-Knox and Adarius 'The Party Starter' Pickett.
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What will be on display are fierce battles for the few available starting jobs, backup spots, practice-roster vacancies and even trying to be noticed by other CFL teams looking to fill holes.
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'We bring in 85 guys, plus the non-counters, and on Day 1, I tell them, whether they make our roster or in the preseason, they need to perform so somebody else may see them and give them an opportunity,' head coach Bob Dyce said at TD Place on Thursday, the Redblacks' first day back at home base after a training camp held at Queen's University in Kingston.
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'I'd love to see all these guys play in the league, whether it's with us or somebody else. That's our goal as coaches: prepare them, make these guys better players, so that they continue to to have opportunities.'
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Talking to the team at Dyce's request earlier in the day was defensive back Justin Howell, a former Carleton Raven who the Redblacks selected with their seventh-round pick (55th overall) in the 2018 draft and has been a mainstay since.
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Dyce, who was the Redblacks special-teams coach then, remembers vividly how Howell performed that year in the pre-season finale against the Toronto Argonauts.
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'It sticks in my mind,' Dyce said. 'Justin went out, played on special teams and made the point that I had to go to the head coach (who was Rick Campbell, now Redblacks special-teams coach) and say, 'We cannot release this guy.'
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