To sensationalize the Toronto Argonauts’ early playoff exit as the biggest upset in CFL playoff history would be a gross example of someone not knowing their three-down history.
The demise of the 16-2 Argos at the hands of the clearly inferior Alouettes is a big deal, but let’s go over a few facts before we overreact to Chad Kelly’s misery.
Despite what some will have you believe, the 2023 Toronto Argonauts were not the greatest team in CFL history. And it’s not even close.
For starters, the only other 16-win team, a 1989 juggernaut from Edmonton, was statistically and optically much more dominant and intimidating than this year’s Argonauts.
The average score in a Toronto game this season (rounding up) was a 33-22 win. For the ’89 Edmonton team, it was a 36-17 blowout victory. Edmonton’s margin of victory outdid Toronto’s by eight points. That’s a big difference — almost double.
If we break it down to average beatdown per victory, the gap widens even further. The offence Chad Kelly steered through almost all of Toronto’s victories piled up a whopping 35.19 points per win (no rounding this time). The offence Tracy Ham navigated for Edmonton the year the Berlin Wall fell posted 37 points per game during their 16 wins.
That number was enough for Ham to win the Most Outstanding Player award that fall, as Kelly likely will this week for Toronto. But anyone who followed that Edmonton team will tell you it wasn’t the offence that propelled them to such domination that year. It was the greatest defence in CFL history that bulldozed that Edmonton team into the history books for winning so many games.
Don Matthews had just come off a one-year CFL hiatus and agreed to run Joe Faragalli’s defence in 1989. He’d run Hugh Campbell’s defence right through the five-in-a-row dynasty that wrapped up earlier in the decade and Don was ready to do some more wrecking with reigning all-stars Brett ‘The Toaster’ Williams, Danny Bass, and Stanley Blair.
That defence stifled opposing offences to a mind-blowing 12.94 points per match during the games Edmonton won. It’s a far cry from even the impressive 21.56 points per victory that Toronto surrendered this year.
That doesn’t even describe the roster full of rockstars still hanging around from not only their Grey Cup win two years earlier in 1987, but some, like Matthews, head coach Joe Faragalli, and offensive lineman Hector Pothier, who had been with the Edmonton organization during the great dynasty, which their city on the map even before Wayne Gretzky did.
If the picture of 1989’s Goliath being a much bigger dragon to slay than this year’s Argo bunch doesn’t drive the point home, then some comparison between the Davids in these matchups should.
This year’s Montreal Alouettes got fat off some easy opponents but did win 11 games during the regular season. That’s better than the nine wins captured by the Saskatchewan Roughriders prior to their Western Final upset.
In fact, what happened at BMO Field Saturday might not even be the biggest upset in Toronto Argonauts history. The Argos’ last game at old Exhibition Stadium was a blowout loss in the 1988 Eastern Final to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Like this year’s Argos, those Boatmen (14-4) were also five games better than their opponents as Winnipeg was 9-9 during the regular season.
It’s a great comparison and the different eras add a touch of subjectivity, for sure. But there is ample evidence to suggest this upset should not be declared the biggest in CFL history.
