CFL Week 8 Predictions: Mismatches in Calgary and Regina? And can Hamilton pounce on Montreal’s injury woes?

With the first-third of the 2025 CFL season in the books, Calgary and Saskatchewan have successfully established themselves as the top Grey Cup contenders. But with Winnipeg contesting the first of two Grey Cup rematches against a struggling Argonauts team, can the two West Division foes get to 6-1?

(Image Credit to Daniel Crump/CFL.ca)

Last week, I went 2-2 with my weekly picks; I correctly called the Calgary Stampeders win over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats win over the Ottawa Redblacks, while missing the mark on Montreal’s win over Toronto and Saskatchewan’s win over BC. As a result, my record now stands at 15-12 ahead of the second-third of the CFL season.

Montreal Alouettes (4-2) vs Calgary Stampeders (5-1):

At first, it really did seem like the Toronto Argonauts were going to pull off the upset of the season. 

Enter Davis Alexander. 

Despite still managing a hamstring injury suffered earlier in the season, the Alouettes’ star quarterback was able to help his team get back into the game against Toronto and eventually pull off a win. 

However, his impact will be missed in a massive game against Calgary, who is coming off of a massive 41-20 win over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. That win sees Calgary clinch the season-series against the Blue Bombers and maintain their advantage atop the West Division. 

And with the way things are trending in the CFL, this could easily be an early-season Grey Cup preview. 

I could see this matchup going one of two ways. Either both defences come to play and we see a low-scoring affair with a lot of turnovers, or both offences come to play and we see a high-scoring affair with no turnovers at all. 

And both of these outcomes favour Calgary. With Davis Alexander injured once again, McLeod Bethel-Thompson will be set to take the reins of the Alouettes’ offence ahead of their game in Calgary. And while Bethel-Thompson is certainly capable of getting his offence down the field, he’s also shown his struggles throughout the later years of his career. This has especially been the case this year as despite a decent performance against BC, his Alouettes offence was only able to muster 20 points. 

And while Montreal’s defence has shown its ability to get stops and turnovers, Calgary has done the same, albeit at a much more efficient rate. If the Alouettes’ defence can’t get the big stops it did against Toronto, and the Stampeders defence dominates the turnover battle, this game could risk getting ugly quickly. 

While the use of the run game could alleviate defensive concerns for Montreal, unless a much-improved McLeod Bethel-Thompson takes the field, I cannot see a way that Montreal wins this game. I am going to take Calgary to get a big win over one of the East Division’s top teams. 

The pick: Stampeders 34, Alouettes 19

Edmonton Elks (1-4) vs Saskatchewan Roughriders (5-1):

Whatever Edmonton put on display against BC was the complete opposite of what characterized their performance against Ottawa. 

Ah well, at least the Elks won an early-season game. 

Yay?

The good news for Edmonton is that they can thank Saskatchewan for putting BC back in its place; this took the form of a 33-27 victory over the Lions that was never as close as the final score might suggest. 

The bad news? Edmonton has to play that Saskatchewan team this week. In Regina. 

The other bit of good news? Edmonton’s first win last season came on the road against Saskatchewan. And the Elks have also won their last two games at Mosaic Stadium and three of their last four. 

Good news-bad news aside, Edmonton is facing yet another must-win game. With the BC Lions losing to Saskatchewan, Edmonton has a chance to dig itself out of yet another early hole ahead of a crucial run of games against East Division opposition. 

If the Elks are to win their third-straight game at Mosaic Stadium, it might have to be through the air; the Roughriders defence has only given up more than 100 yards on the ground in just two of the six games they have played so far this season. That said, four of six quarterbacks eclipsed 300 yards passing in their respective games against Saskatchewan; the lone exceptions to this are Nick Arbuckle and Jeremiah Masoli. 

That said, Edmonton’s Tre Ford has only 984 passing yards to his name so far this season, which puts him at second-last among the league’s starters and ahead of only Zach Collaros. However, he is slowly but surely becoming confident leading this Edmonton offence; the only two times he’s thrown for less than 200 yards this season were in both games against BC. 

So it’s clear that if Tre Ford can bounce back from a down-game of sorts against BC and continue to get the ball moving down the field, Edmonton will be able to score points against a strong Saskatchewan defence. 

Defensively, however, I don’t feel too confident about Edmonton’s chances. Not only has the Elks defence given up 30 points in each of their first five games, but they have only forced three sacks and two turnovers throughout the season’s opening stretch. 

To make matters worse, Saskatchewan quarterback Trevor Harris is coming off of a performance against BC that saw him throw for 395 yards and three touchdowns, while averaging a whopping 13.2 yards per completion. 

Against one of the most confident and accurate passers in the entire CFL, Edmonton’s defence is going to have a hard time getting off the field. And with Saskatchewan’s receiving corps starting to get healthy, it could be a long day at the office for the Elks. I can see the Edmonton offence doing just enough to keep the team in the game, but Saskatchewan wins in what could be a very ugly contest. 

The pick: Roughriders 37, Elks 21

Winnipeg Blue Bombers (3-2) vs Toronto Argonauts (1-5):

Taylor Swift said it best: “I think I've seen this film before. And I didn't like the ending.”  

That not only describes an entire city’s sports culture, but it also describes the Argonauts post-halftime almost perfectly. Despite building a 25-7 lead, any momentum Toronto had built crumbled quicker than Logan Paul did after going face-to-face with country singer Jelly Roll. 

In this case, Logan Paul is Toronto, while the role of Jelly Roll is filled by Montreal. Now that’s a meme.

Wrestling jokes aside, what would have been the Argonauts biggest win of the season instead turned into a sixth episode of The Nick Arbuckle Experience. Early dominance and first-down throws galore. You know what else was on display? Despair-flavoured turnovers. 

And now, this deflated and momentum-less Argonauts squad will return home to play a Winnipeg Blue Bombers team in what is the first of two Grey Cup 111 rematches. Like with Toronto, the Blue Bombers are coming off of their own devastating loss; a 41-20 decision against Calgary gave Winnipeg its second straight loss and makes this a must-win contest of sorts for the Blue Bombers. 

Scratch that. This is a must-win contest for both of these squads. 

For Toronto, their 26-25 loss to Montreal put them at 1-5 on the season. It also keeps them four points back of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for second in the East Division and four back of the BC Lions for the final playoff spot (via crossover). While that doesn’t sound like a death sentence for Toronto at this early stage of the season, this comes with a few caveats. Firstly, Hamilton owns the early head-to-head tiebreaker over Toronto with one out of three games played. Secondly, Chad Kelly hasn’t yet returned for Toronto and as of this writing, his status for the Argos’ Week 8 contest against Winnipeg is to be determined. And finally, as BC would make the playoffs via crossover if the season ended today, Toronto has to keep pace with a BC Lions team that is easily capable of winning at least nine games this year.

As for Winnipeg, two straight losses to the Stampeders has resulted in not only the ceding of the head-to-head tiebreaker to Calgary, but it puts Winnipeg at risk of being stuck in third or even fourth place in the West Division. 

That said, it isn’t all doom and gloom for Winnipeg. While they did get outscored 24-7 in the second half against Calgary, they not only kept it close throughout the first half but they also were able to implement a game plan to get the ball down field and into the end zone. Longer passing plays helped to stretch the Calgary secondary when the Stampeders defensive line seemed to be limiting the effectiveness of the Blue Bombers ground game, allowing for Winnipeg to keep Calgary on edge and to consistently allow Winnipeg to threaten to score.

That all changed when Zach Collaros exited the game after a hit to the head in the second quarter. While Chris Streveler had his moments, especially in the opening few minutes of the third quarter, the threat from Winnipeg never really manifested in the same way that it did when Zach Collaros was leading the offence. 

If Winnipeg is to win this game, they need to prioritize their run game, led by Brady Oliveira. In the Argos-Alouettes game, when Montreal didn’t run the ball, the Alouettes were unable to consistently move the ball deep down the field; this played a role in the Argos gaining a 25-7 lead. But when they turned to the ground game, it almost immediately turned the tide of the game towards the Alouettes. Even though they rushed for just 88 yards, Montreal’s ground game was still able to get two rushing touchdowns, both of which were part of Montreal’s 19-0 run to close out the game. As Toronto’s run defence has also allowed well over 100 rushing yards per game, simply getting Brady Oliveira and the run game going should be enough to put the Argonauts into a spot of bother.

As for Toronto, the key will be to continue to get the ball to different receivers and to emphasize the run game on early-downs. This is going to be especially true early in the game; against Montreal, Nick Arbuckle was consistently able to get the ball out to receivers like Kevin Mital and Damonte Coxie, allowing for Toronto to move the ball down the field without giving Montreal the chance to prioritize locking down one receiver over another. Giving multiple receivers looks could benefit Toronto against a Winnipeg defence that is capable of pouncing on mistakes, especially in the passing game. 

With both teams looking to get back into their respective divisional races, this home-and-home could easily put one team back on track, while potentially condemning the other to a long second-half of the season. And with that in mind, while Winnipeg will be the heavy favourites in this game regardless of whether Zach Collaros is the starter next week or not, Toronto should be able to be competitive in this game.

Ultimately, considering what I have seen so far from Toronto, I cannot see a way in which the Argonauts play perfect football against one of the top teams in the CFL. While the starting quarterback situation for both themselves and the Blue Bombers could easily change the dynamic of this game, I am going to lean towards Winnipeg and back them to get back in the win column. It may take a while, but the Blue Bombers will get the win

The pick: Blue Bombers 27, Argonauts 22

Hamilton Tiger-Cats (4-2) vs BC Lions (3-4):

I admit it, I might have bought a little too much of the BC Lions stock after they got back to .500. 

Whatever momentum they did a good job earning after beating the Montreal Alouettes and Edmonton Elks in consecutive weeks, they did just as good of a job throwing right out the window in one game against Saskatchewan. 

Before I continue the rant, I will give credit to Nathan Rourke and the Lions offence for keeping BC in the game to some degree. 

That said, the Lions defence had no answer for a Roughriders offence that got schooled the previous week against Calgary. It was clear from the opening minutes that Trevor Harris was out for revenge; he only threw seven incompletions in a 395 yard and three touchdown effort against the BC Lions. 

No need to talk about the rest of the Roughriders offence, as that alone should scare any BC Lions fan ahead of this Week 8 encounter against a Hamilton Tiger-Cats team that is continuing to string strong performances together. Despite having to hold off several Ottawa rallies, the Tiger-Cat defence was able to get several takeaways in an effort to keep the Redblacks at arms length. In addition, Bo Levi Mitchell threw for over 327 yards in a performance that got him into the top-ten on the CFL’s All-Time Passing Yards list. 

And not only is the Hamilton defence slowly improving with every passing week, but it seems like we haven’t yet seen the best from this Hamilton offence. While Bo Levi Mitchell did throw an interception in his team’s Week 7 game against Ottawa, that doesn’t take away from the fact that this offence is more than capable of driving down the field and scoring in any given timeframe. Whether it’s through 60-yard passes to flip the field or through shorter plays that look to surgically pick apart an opposing defence and burn the clock, this Hamilton offence has shown glimpses of its full potential; with all the pieces put together, who knows how good this Tiger-Cats team could be. 

At the same time, one shouldn’t discount this BC Lions offence. Despite the team’s struggles in Week 7, Nathan Rourke still looked extremely serviceable as he threw for 337 yards, three touchdowns, and an interception in what was a losing effort. Even while playing just five games, Nathan Rourke’s performance so far has seen him into the top-five for passing yards this season. But with running back James Butler looking to bounce back after rushing for just thirty yards against Saskatchewan, Nathan Rourke must be able to get his offence back on track if they are to keep up with this Hamilton Tiger-Cats team. 

The key for the BC Lions in this matchup will be to keep Bo Levi Mitchell from stretching the field and getting easy completions. That should help BC in not only alleviating their first-quarter scoreboard concerns (the Lions have given up 48 points in all of their first quarters combined to this point, while scoring just 14 combined points in the first quarter), but also in allowing the defence to get stops and keep the team in the game. 

I can see BC keeping this game close, but ultimately what will let them down is an inability to win the turnover battle. With Hamilton’s defence increasingly capable of getting turnovers, BC will need to force several turnovers to try and keep pace in this game; however, Bo Levi Mitchell has only thrown one interception in the last four games. I see Hamilton pulling away in the second half to win this game off another strong performance from the defence. 

The pick: Tiger-Cats 28, Lions 17

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Article written by Noah Guttman