The CFL eliminated the Ottawa Redblacks in a footnote.
There was no announcement, no press conference. It appeared as a bullet point in the league's Week 16 media release on Wednesday, in a section headed "Road to the 113th Grey Cup," between a note about Edmonton clinching and the explanation of the crossover rule.
Week 15: OTT eliminated from playoff contention.
That is how year one of the Ryan Dinwiddie era ended. Ottawa is 0-12. The Redblacks have now lost 18 consecutive games dating back to 2025, which The Canadian Press notes is a CFL modern-era record for consecutive defeats.
The more interesting document arrived the next day.
Ten moves in a single day
On September 16, Ottawa processed ten roster transactions. Five of them were injury-list designations.
Defensive lineman Sione Teuhema and linebacker Brian Cole II were both transferred to the six-game injured list. Offensive lineman Zack Pelehos, linebacker James Peter and linebacker Benjamin Dobson were all extended on it. Every one of the five carries the same pair of dates: a list running to October 30, with October 3 the first day any of them can be activated.
Around those five, Ottawa promoted American offensive lineman Zachary Barlev from the practice roster, added three Americans to the practice roster — linebacker Kyron Johnson out of Kansas, defensive lineman CJ Nunnally IV out of Purdue, defensive back Sage Ryan out of Mississippi — and moved running back Mario Anderson Jr. to the reserve roster. The day before, they released defensive back Shadwel Nkuba II and demoted defensive lineman Kori Roberson Jr.
None of this is unusual on its own. In aggregate it is something else. Ottawa has made 88 transactions in the last 30 days. On September 7 alone the Redblacks released six players, including Global defensive lineman Habakkuk Baldonado and Canadian defensive lineman Philippe Lemieux-Cardinal. Three days before that they released kicker Lewis Ward, a University of Ottawa product who once set a professional football record for consecutive made field goals.
That is not a team tinkering. That is a team taking inventory.
The part of the sheet nobody reads
Here is the detail worth stopping on. Of the five players Ottawa put on or kept on the injured list Wednesday, three are Canadians — Pelehos, Peter and Dobson. Pelehos and Peter are both University of Ottawa products. Dobson came out of Calgary.
The three Americans the Redblacks added to the practice roster this week do nothing for the ratio.
A CFL team that cannot dress its Canadians has a structural problem underneath its record, because the ratio is not optional. It dictates who can be on the field at any moment, which in turn dictates what the coaching staff can call. Ottawa has spent the season shuffling Nationals in and out of availability — Michael Brodrique, Luiji Vilain, Cleyon Laing and A.J. Allen all came off injury designations on September 11, the same week Aidan John went to the reserve roster and a week after Anim Dankwah went to the practice roster.
Records get explained by quarterbacks. Rosters get explained by ratio. Ottawa's has been in constant motion all year.
What Dinwiddie said in June
To understand what the last five games are actually for, go back to the decision that set the season.
In late May, Dinwiddie named Jake Maier his Week 1 starter. Dru Brown, who had quarterbacked Ottawa back to the playoffs, asked to be traded. In June, Ottawa granted it and sent him to Winnipeg.
"Dru wasn't happy and I think everybody knew he wasn't happy," Dinwiddie told The Canadian Press on June 27. "The coach-player communication and relationship obviously was never going to be there after the request, right? Everybody around the building was kind of walking on eggshells, and so that's not there anymore."
Hours after completing the trade, Dinwiddie signed McLeod Bethel-Thompson, his Grey Cup-winning quarterback from Toronto in 2022.
"We had to move forward and find an answer and have a plan," Dinwiddie said. "McLeod obviously played good football for me, we won games. So that was our answer."
Brown gave his own account three days later, at his first Winnipeg media availability on June 30. Asked what he had been told, he was direct.
"I think he said that it was just like an arm strength thing. That's what he told me. So yeah, that's his opinion and he's entitled to that and he makes the calls over there. So yeah, I wasn't his guy and that's okay."
Asked whether he had requested his release before the trade: "I did. That's true." Asked why: "If that's kind of how we're going to do things, then I would prefer to be elsewhere."
Asked whether anyone had ever raised his arm strength before, Brown said no — not once, in a career that had taken him to a playoff berth in the nation's capital. And asked about being publicly labelled a distraction, he answered the way he answered everything else that day.
"Again, it's his opinion and that's okay. I've never really felt that way about myself, and I don't think many people would say that."
The insurance policy is now the plan
Maier never found it. Through his first two starts he completed 61 per cent of his throws at 6.3 yards per attempt — both CFL lows at the time. Dinwiddie cut his playbook from roughly 90 plays to 50, telling CP, "We had all this stuff in, but we're not very good at any of it right now. So let's find out what we're good at."
On Saturday in Calgary, Bethel-Thompson makes his first start of the season. He replaced Maier in the second quarter of last week's 26-23 loss in Toronto and went 16-of-23 for 192 yards and a touchdown, which was enough to force the decision.
So the veteran signed in June as a support piece behind the starter is the starter. Brown, meanwhile, was named a CFL Player of the Week in his sixth week as a Bomber and has since settled in as Winnipeg's backup behind a healthy Zach Collaros — which is to say the trade has not obviously resolved itself for anyone.
And the general manager who made both calls now has a senior football adviser in Jim Popp sitting above him, hired eight days after the club fired vice-president of football operations Shawn Burke and six days after president Adrian Sciarra was moved out.
What five games are worth
None of this means the rest of Ottawa's season is empty. It means it has a different purpose than the one it started with.
Five games is an evaluation window, and the Redblacks are using it the way an eliminated team should — giving late-season reps to Johnson, Nunnally and Ryan, seeing what Barlev is on the active roster, finding out whether Bethel-Thompson at 37 is a 2027 bridge or a farewell.
What it will not answer is the ratio question, because the three Canadians who might have helped answer it are on a list until October 3 at the earliest.
Ottawa visits Calgary on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET on TSN1, the first half of a home-and-home that continues September 26. The Stampeders are 5-8 and still alive. The Redblacks are playing for a win that would end a record no franchise wants, and for whatever Dinwiddie and Popp decide they have learned.
The transaction sheet suggests they started learning it on Wednesday.