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CFL: It’s the MOP vs. the might-have-been MOP
Nathan Rourke coulda been a contender. Through 9 video games of his first season as a professional starter, the 24-year-old led the CFL in each main passing class and had propelled the B.C. Lions to an 8-1 report. He was the frontrunner to grow to be the primary Canadian to win the Most Outstanding Player award since Jon Cornish in 2013. Then a severe foot harm derailed Rourke’s rise and sidelined him for B.C.’s last 9 regular-season video games, save for a cameo within the finale at Winnipeg.
Rourke returned to the starter’s function for final week’s playoff sport vs. Calgary and threw for a formidable 321 yards and two touchdowns in a 30-16 residence win. But the foot nonetheless seems bothersome, and now Rourke should go on the street — not to point out outdoor, in chilly climate, in entrance of a hostile crowd — to face the league’s hardest defence as B.C. visits Winnipeg for the West Division last on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. ET.
This sport is being billed because the quarterback of the longer term vs. the quarterback of the moment, as Blue Bombers veteran Zach Collaros is favoured to win his second consecutive Most Outstanding Player award. The 34-year-old completed with greater than 4,000 yards passing for the primary time, threw a CFL-high 37 landing passes and steered Winnipeg to a league-best 15-3 report and a first-round bye.
Collaros and the Bombers are four-point favourites over the Lions and are additionally favoured to win their third straight Grey Cup. No CFL group has three-peated since Edmonton received 5 in a row from 1978-82.
The winner of the Winnipeg-B.C. matchup will play for the Grey Cup subsequent week in Regina towards the winner of the East last between Montreal and Toronto on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET.
The host Argonauts are favoured by a discipline purpose after profitable their comparatively weak division with a 11-7 report to earn a first-round bye. Toronto’s so-so offence may get a lift from the return of Canadian operating again Andrew Harris. The 2019 Grey Cup MVP (with Winnipeg) is ready to play for the primary time since tearing a pectoral muscle in August. The Argos’ ball-hawking defence will look to hold creating turnovers after main the CFL with 48 takeaways, together with Jamal Peters’ league-high six interceptions.
Peters and firm will strive to include star Montreal receiver Eugene Lewis, who received the East’s nomination for Most Outstanding Player after piling up 1,303 yards receiving and catching 10 touchdowns. He added seven grabs for 98 yards in final week’s 28-17 playoff win over Hamilton. With the victory, Montreal improved to 8-3 since a brutal 2-6 begin to the season that noticed Trevor Harris take over at quarterback for the benched Vernon Adams Jr., and Danny Maciocia change the fired Khari Jones as head coach.
U Sports: Can anybody cease Western?
A victory in certainly one of Saturday’s 4 Canadian college convention finals places a group a win away from reaching the 57th Vanier Cup. That sport will happen Nov. 26 on the Western campus, and proper now the London, Ont., faculty seems like a very good wager to be taking part in for a nationwide championship repeat in its personal yard.
Powered by a speeding assault that averaged 292 yards per sport and 8.2 yards per carry, the No. 1-ranked Mustangs went 8-0 within the common season whereas outscoring their opponents by a median of greater than 30 factors. In its first playoff sport final week, Western rolled to a 45-9 win over Laurier as nationwide speeding chief Keon Edwards ran for 136 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Western’s opponent within the Yates Cup Ontario championship sport is No. 3-ranked Queen’s, which went 7-1 within the common season earlier than simple playoff wins over Toronto and Ottawa. Watch the Yates Cup dwell Saturday at 1 p.m. ET on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem.
The Yates Cup winner advances to subsequent week’s Mitchell Bowl nationwide semifinal, the place it can face the winner of Saturday’s Dunsmore Cup Quebec title sport between No. 2 Laval and No. 5 Montreal. The winners of Saturday’s Atlantic championship (No. 6 St. FX vs. No. 10 Mount Allison within the Loney Bowl) and West championship (No. 4 Saskatchewan vs. No. 9 UBC within the Hardy Cup) meet within the Uteck Bowl nationwide semifinal subsequent week.
With the Vanier Cup simply two weeks away, CBC Sports’ Rob Pizzo revisits the basic 1993 sport for the most recent episode of his glorious Unknown History sequence. Eleven months after the University of Toronto dropped its storied football program, the Varsity Blues — rescued by alumni donations — pulled off a sports-movie ending by beating Calgary in a thriller at SkyDome that got here down to the ultimate play. Get the entire story by watching the video right here.