‘Awful’ finish taints Alouettes win for Davis Alexander, Jason Maas disagrees

Photo: Raphael Williams-Claudio/RWC Photography/3DownNation. All rights reserved.

The Montreal Alouettes defeated the Ottawa Redblacks on Sunday, but the postgame comments from franchise quarterback Davis Alexander were anything but celebratory.

“It was awful, way too close of a game,” he told the media in Montreal. “Awful for our standard. It’s nice to obviously come out of a game like that with a win, but it’s way too close. It’s way too much little stuff happening that we have to be able to fix.”

The 27-year-old didn’t like how slowly his team started the second half. After dominating 21-6 before halftime, the Alouettes were outscored 12-0 in the third quarter. Ottawa quarterback Jake Maier threw touchdown passes to Justin Hardy and Keelan White, while the Alouettes managed only one first down on two possessions.

Montreal’s offence came to life in the fourth quarter, as Alexander threw a touchdown pass to Tyler Snead, Travis Theis scored on a five-yard run, and José Maltos Díaz booted a 25-yard field goal. In the end, the team needed each of those scores to win 37-35.

Despite the late offensive outburst, Alexander clearly wasn’t satisfied.

“(A letup) seems to happen to us every freakin’ week in the third quarter, so something has to change,” said Alexander.

“I want laser-focus through four quarters, but I don’t know — can you measure that? Is that actually the problem? That’s just the way I see it, but I’m obviously pretty frustrated and pissed off. We just have to be better.”

When asked about Alexander’s comments, head coach Jason Maas disagreed with his quarterback.

“I would never say that (a win is awful). I’m sorry, I don’t believe in that. The CFL’s hard to win games,” said Maas.

“How many games right now in the CFL are coming down to the last three minutes? Just about every one of them. Now, can you get upset about not playing to a standard on every play? Sure, you can do that, but the totality of a game, if you win a game, you’ve gotta be happy with that and proud of that.”

The loss dropped the Redblacks to 0-3 and extended Montreal’s head-to-head winning streak to 12 games. Despite the recent one-sidedness of the rivalry between the two clubs, it doesn’t seem Maas wants to take Ottawa or any opponent lightly.

“I give them credit for making plays. We made plays, too. We made more plays than they did and won the game. and that’s all we really care about. In a season, it’s hard to win, and it’s a grind. We’re looking to grind for nine, so nothing’s gonna be easy,” he said.

“When you play tough games, you’ve gotta be proud of that effort and proud of that result. I’m not saying you don’t want to be better. We want to be better and when we look at this film, we will be better for sure because of this game.”

The Alouettes have been outscored 32-3 over their last three third quarters. Maas acknowledged the trend, though he’s not sure why it’s occurred.

“I don’t know, to be honest,” said Maas. “That’s been a trend, we’ve gotta correct it, and we’ve gotta get better. The bottom line is you play for four quarters, though, and you continue to grind, you continue to play through it, and our guys do a tremendous job of that, and they’ve been finishing those games.”

Montreal was without both of their starting cornerbacks on Sunday, as Lorenzo Burns and Kabion Ento were placed on the one-game injured list. Don Callis made his first career start at boundary cornerback, while Faion Hicks started at field-side cornerback in what was his first CFL game.

The Alouettes also have three offensive starters on the six-game injured list, including receivers Cole Spieker and Jerreth Sterns, and centre Justin Lawrence.

Despite favouring his leg momentarily on Sunday, Alexander doesn’t appear destined to join them, telling reporters postgame he’s “all good.”

There’s a lot to like about how Montreal has started the 2026 season. Sitting atop the East Division standings, the club ranks third in net offence, fourth in net defence, and tied for second in turnover differential.

Though he doesn’t necessarily seem satisfied with the season overall, Maas is clearly pretty happy about getting a win over the Redblacks on Sunday.

“If you had told me at the beginning of the year we’d be 3-1 going into the bye, I wouldn’t have taken it because I want to compete on all those,” he said. “This week, we wanted to be 3-1, and that was a huge thing to be able to do in our own building.”