Why the Southern Ontario franchises might be the least of the East’s problems

Through seven weeks of CFL play, there's been one clear league-wide storyline: the dominance of the West Division and the struggles of the East. Heading into Week Eight's games, the West teams were a combined 23-9, while the East was 5-19 and just 2-16 against the West. With the Eastern teams having records of 2-4, 1-5, 1-5 and 1-5, it's tempting to lump them all into the same boat and write the division off altogether. A closer look suggests there may be two distinct tiers in the East, though, with the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats substantially closer to turning things around on the field than the Montreal Alouettes or Ottawa Redblacks.

Let's start with Toronto, which had a better record (2-4) and a better point differential (-13) heading into Week Eight than any other East club. The signs that the Argonauts aren't a bad team go beyond that, though. Through seven weeks of play, they led the CFL in offensive yardage per game (377.0 yards), passing yards per game (306.3), and completion percentage (68.5 per cent). Quarterback Ricky Ray has been remarkably good despite a laundry list of injuries to his top receivers, throwing for 1,687 yards so far (third in the league, but with one less game played than the guys ahead of him) with a 68.1 per cent completion mark.

Yes, the Argos' offence isn't perfect; the rushing offence has been okay, but needs to be better (their average of 5.4 yards per rush is fourth in the league), they need to limit the turnovers, and they have to work on finishing drives with touchdowns rather than field goals. Still, the Toronto offence is in pretty great shape compared to a lot of teams, and the defence is doing some things well also, allowing opposing quarterbacks to complete just 57.7 per cent of their throws to date. The Argonauts are far from an elite team right now, but their issues (players adjusting to two new coordinators with both DC Chris Jones and STC Mike O'Shea moving on to head coaching jobs elsewhere, plus the aforementioned injuries) seem much more fixable than some other clubs'.

The Tiger-Cats don't seem to be in terrible shape either. Apart from a 31-10 blowout loss to Saskatchewan in Week One, they've been in every game, losing 28-24, 10-7, 27-26 and 36-29. Three of those losses (all but the 27-26 one) were on the road, too, and home-field advantage has often been estimated to be worth up to a touchdown in this league, so their front-loaded road schedule (thanks to stadium construction) may have their record looking worse than it should be so far. It's notable that their home games so far have also come in front of a crowd of just 6,000 at Ron Joyce Stadium thanks to the ongoing construction issues at Tim Hortons Field; having one-quarter of your typical fans there to disrupt the opposing offence doesn't make things easy.

Of course, there are problems beyond the stadium. In particular, the defence has been pretty porous thus far, giving up 354.3 yards of offence per game and a 65.6 completion percentage (both second-worst in the league). Head coach and general manager Kent Austin may have made over his roster too much in the offseason too; this was a team that went to the Grey Cup last year, and while some change was needed, the amount of changes he made appear to have disrupted the team's chemistry. Hamilton also needs to get the ground game going. Still, they have one very good quarterback returning to practice this week (Zach Collaros), and another one who's stepped up incredibly well in his absence (Dan LeFevour), plus a bunch of talented offensive pieces. Don't write them off yet.

Things are much more of a mess in Montreal and Ottawa. The Alouettes are struggling to adjust to life after Anthony Calvillo, with both quarterback Troy Smith and their overall offensive design regressing so far, and their once lights-out defence has also played poorly. There's coaching tension going on too. Perhaps the bold changes they made this week will help, but there's a lot to fix there.

It's hard to say if things are better or worse for the Redblacks; at least they have a proven and successful quarterback in Henry Burris, but there aren't a lot of other bright spots. Their defence is giving up league-worst numbers in most categories, including 31.5 points per game, and they haven't developed much chemistry on offence yet. Struggles are to be expected with an expansion team, especially as their players and coaches get to know each other, but the degree to which the Redblacks have struggled has been remarkable. We'll see if they can learn from their mistakes so far.

It's the CFL, and anything can always happen, but in the East, it looks like both the Redblacks and Alouettes are in for long seasons at the moment. Fortunately for Tiger-Cats and Argonauts fans, their teams' outlooks appear a bit brighter. That doesn't mean that the "East is the least" stories are wrong; to this point, they've certainly been accurate. As the season goes on, though, it seems quite possible that at least a couple of East teams can get better.