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News August 29, 2026

Game Recap | Wpg 44 Mtl 28

Brady Oliveira rushed for over 100 yards in the Blue Bombers win over Montreal; photos by Cameron Bartlett

@EdTaitWFC

There are always some versions of statement wins authored by football teams over the course of a season. And then there are the kind of delicious and tasty STATEMENT WINS!!!!! — all caps with a handful exclamation marks for extra emphasis — the Winnipeg Blue Bombers just served up for their home faithful.

The Blue Bombers completely changed the current narrative swirling around their squad in front of a capacity crowd of 32,343 at Princess Auto Stadium Friday night with an impressive 44-28 win over the Montreal Alouettes that will quiet some naysayers and open eyes across the Canadian Football League.

The win not only improves the team to 6-5 in the battle royale that is the West Division race, but it came in toppling an Alouettes team which had won seven straight and rolled over its opponents like Roman legions in their 9-1 start.

Check that… they’re 9-2 now.

“This is the team we want to be,” said veteran defensive end Willie Jefferson inside a raucous Blue Bombers locker room after the game. “Going into the back end of the season, this is the type of football we want to play. We want teams to know that they can’t come here and think it’s going to be an easy win.

“That’s what it looks like when we play two halves.”

Indeed, the Blue Bombers effort came in the wake of last week’s devastating loss to the Edmonton Elks which, leading into this one, had left many in Bomber Nation frothing with anger.

What they saw Friday was a three-phase victory as the offence came to life with 447 yards of net offence and five touchdowns and three field goals against the stingiest defence in the league, while the defensive unit held the Als offence to under 30 points for the first time this year and the special teams got its usual work from Trey Vaval and a critical punt block in the second half.

Interestingly, while we called it a statement win — and that was clearly the theme at the top of this piece — the vibe post-game was just as much ho-hum as it was euphoric.

This is, after all, the team it believes it can be.

So, statement win? Well…

“Nah, that’s fine,” said running back Brady Oliveira, who was again sensational with 106 yards on 16 carries and a TD. “I talked earlier about the naysayers and the doubters… all we need is us in here.

“Huge team win. We needed this one. This is exactly what I envisioned (from the offence) in the offseason when we made all those signings and with the guys we brought in and the coaches we brought in. I felt like this is always what we’ve been capable of; unfortunately, we just haven’t shown enough of it this season, but we showed it tonight.

“This is something we can build off, and we can continue to get better, and I know the guys have that mindset that, win or loss, they have this growth mindset of coming in, correcting mistakes and how can we continue to better. We have so many opportunities ahead of us and that’s exciting because we played a pretty good game tonight.”

More thoughts on the Blue Bombers sixth win of the season from our view in the press box…

5 INSTANT TAKEAWAYS

1 Montreal’s attack still put up some gaudy individual numbers — QB Davis Alexander was good on 20-of-31 for 257 with four TDs, three to Tyler Snead and a fourth to Tyson Philpot. But Winnipeg’s defence limited the Als to just 284 net yards of offence; this against a team that had been averaging 454.3 yards per game, including 118.8 along the ground and 343.8 through the air.

While they did find the end zone four times, Winnipeg’s defence also forced four punts, forced a fumble and a turnover on downs on the last series in their 11 possessions (not including a kneel-down at the end of the first half).

Alexander’s record as a starter is now 20-2 in his 21 regular season and he had entered the game, it’s worth noting, with eight 300-yard passing games in his last 10 starts.

2 Zach Collaros was sensational in completing 26-of-32 passes (81 percent) for 324 yards with two TDs to Pokey Wilson, who finished with nine catches for 114 yards while Oliveira went over 100 for the fourth time in the last five games as offensive coordinator Tommy Condell and his staff put together an excellent game plan.

“I still need to watch the tape and there will be some plays I’d want back, for sure,” said Collaros. “But I thought we did a good job running the football, throwing the football, receivers did a great job blocking on the edge.

“Montreal does a good job. They try to make you dump it down, check it down, and we did that well pretty well tonight and, again, credit the receivers for blocking on the edge. They were giving us the looks for it. Tim had quite a few yards on that, but Tommy (Nield) and Nic (Demski) and Pokey are out there blocking.

“We were able to stay on the football field (37 minutes and 50 seconds of possession compared to Montreal’s 22:10).”

Asked about the offensive playcalling, he added, “Tommy’s the best play caller I’ve ever played for.”

3 Sergio Castillo is now 15-of-15 over his last four games after hitting from 51, 43 and 20 yards.

4 Willie Jefferson batted down a Davis Alexander pass in the fourth quarter for the 100th of his career. He joins defensive backs Eddie Davis (111) and Adrion Smith (105) as the only players to reach the century mark in CFL history and it’s a remarkable accomplishment for a defensive lineman.


5 The Blue Bombers got some excellent work from their revamped secondary with safety Redha Kramdi still out along with Michael Griffin II and with Deatrick Nichols a late scratch before the game. The Nichols absence meant Major Williams moved inside to halfback, Trey Vaval started at corner and with Ridge Texada coming as an extra DB in his first CFL game.

“It feels so good to get that ‘W’, man,” said Vaval. “Even after we lost to Edmonton, we still came into work this week with a lot of energy. We found a way tonight.”

The Blue Bombers led 24-21 at the intermission, leaving a potential touchdown off the board with an unfortunate fumble by Tommy Nield at the Alouette goal line with 44 seconds left before halftime.

And, given what happened in Edmonton last week, that missed opportunity potentially loomed large with the Alouettes opening the second half with the ball.

Winnipeg’s defence promptly forced a two and out before Tanner Cadwallader stuffed a Joseph Zema punt which was recovered by David Reese and returned to the Montreal one-yard line.

Two plays later Bryce Perkins scored a critical score that put the home side up 31-21.

447 — Winnipeg’s offence was busy behind the excellent playcalling of Condell and with Collaros pushing all the right buttons. We said this would be a track meet and the Blue Bombers burst out of the starting blocks with a TD on their first drive and it was the offence who kept the motor purring all night.

The Blue Bombers now enter into two of the most fun weeks of the CFL schedule with the Labour Day Classic going next Sunday, Sept. 6th in Regina against the Saskatchewan Roughriders (6 p.m. CDT start time) followed by a visit by Roughriders for the annual Banjo Bowl on Saturday, September 12th ( 3 p.m. CDT start).