Opinion Piece: Kyle Skinner
With their 33-21 loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Friday night, the Ottawa Redblacks have officially set the modern record for longest losing streak in CFL history.
Losers of 15 straight contests dating back to last year, the Redblacks officially broke a tie with the now defunct Shreveport Pirates for consecutive defeats. The last time Ottawa fans saw a victory was nearly a year ago when the team edged out the BC Lions on September 5th, 2025.
While there are technically two longer losing streaks in Canadian football lore on file, both instances came prior to the league incorporating in 1958. The Ottawa Senators (yes, they weren’t overly creative with names a century ago) dropped 25 straight contests over the course of 4+ seasons between 1928 and 1932, while the Hamilton Wildcats (who would eventually merge with the Hamilton Tigers to create the Tiger-Cats) lost 16 games in row between 1948-1949.
It’s been nearly a decade of underperforming in the nation’s capital, as the Redblacks have quickly turned into the CFL’s version of the New York Jets in recent years. Despite regularly picking atop the CFL draft, and there only being 9 teams in the league (which in theory should lead to more ebbs and flows of on field success), Ottawa has finished no higher than 3rd in the East since 2018.
With a record of 27-85-1 (.239 win percentage) since the conclusion of the 2018 season, the club stands alone in terms of on field failures at this point. Even the aforementioned Jets have managed to cobble together a better win percentage than Ottawa has going 35-82 during that span, good for a 30% win rate. And if you’re ever in a position where you can say “I wish I was a Jets fan”, that’s a fairly damning indictment of where your franchise is at.
Cycling through coaches (Rick Campbell, Paul LaPolice, Bob Dyce, Ryan Dinwiddie) GM’s, offensive and defensive coordinators, and more haven’t moved the needle for the Redblacks. Neither have the on field changes those individuals have made regarding roster construction either.
In fact, since former QB Henry Burris left the franchise following the 2016 season, Ottawa has cycled through a number of quarterbacks that makes the Cleveland Browns look like a model of QB development by comparison.
Trevor Harris, Drew Tate, Ryan Lindley, Dominique Davis, Jonathon Jennings, William Arndt, Matt Nichols, Caleb Evans, Devlin Hodges, Jeremiah Masoli, Nick Arbuckle, Tyrie Adams, Dustin Crum, Dru Brown, Matthew Shiltz, Jake Maier, McLeod Bethel-Thompson, and Bryson Barnes have taken snaps for the club since “Hank” left town.
As attendance across the league continues to trend downwards in most markets, it’s a wonder fans continue showing up at all for Redblacks home games at this point. With the fewest points for (207), and second most points against (322, albeit Calgary has played 1 more game than Ottawa, meaning its only a matter of time before they reclaim that dubious honour as well), both sides of the ball have been equally bad this season.
Frankly a tip of the cap has to be handed out to the OSEG sales department. How they continue to get companies to shell out advertising, and licensing dollars in this economy for their current on field product is akin to selling combs to a bald man and should be commended.
But if not the dozens of players, coaches, or GMs, who have been cut loose over the years, who can one blame? Quite simply, ownership. OSEG has taken their eye off the ball both literally and figuratively in their efforts to address their off-field priorities which have little to nothing to do with their on field product, and the franchise has suffered as a result.
As anyone who lives in the National Capital Region can attest to, talks of Lansdowne 2.0 have dominated city council meetings and headlines over the last several years. In 2019 a financial review of the Lansdowne Park project began, with it becoming public knowledge in 2020 that the current iteration of the 30 year partnership between the City and OSEG was unlikely to become profitable.
Everything from a new event centre, to new North Side stands, and retail space was discussed, with the City (i.e. taxpayers) assuming the vast majority of the risk. The project appears to have a price tag north of $420M, but as most construction projects go, this is likely to balloon in the coming years.
There has been ample reporting on why Lansdowne 2.0 seemed like a bad deal for the city, and a great deal for OSEG, with the City seeming to acknowledge as much on page 100 of their public report. “The City cannot assume that OSEG could or would continue to contribute to the Partnership without a reasonable expectation of being able to achieve financial sustainability, or without a reasonable and fair return on their equity contributions to date. In the meantime, the City has benefited greatly from Lansdowne 1.0.”
The focus on jamming a redevelopment project through city council dovetails perfectly with the Redblacks current era of futility beginning in 2019 and stretching to the current day. Is it the entire reason that the team has become the CFL’s laughingstock for the last 7 years? Absolutely not.
Like anything in life, the situation is complex and there are a myriad of factors which have contributed to the team’s downward trajectory. But accountability for the lack of production is sorely lacking at the executive level of the organization. Making examples out of lower ranking individuals and changing nothing at the top of the pyramid doesn’t tend reset organizational culture in any kind of a significant way. And that’s what’s needed in Ottawa at the moment, a cultural reset from the top down.
In “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (40 million copies sold, named the Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century by CEO magazine) author Stephen Covey quips “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”. This quote has been used by business leaders, rappers, CEOs, sports teams and more over the years as a way to direct one’s time, energy and resources towards your single most important goal.
If the Redblacks ownership are more interested in their off-field real estate deals, then they certainly aren’t prioritizing winning a Grey Cup. And if your goal as a professional sports owner isn’t to win, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate whether you should be an owner.
Kudos to R-Nation for your loyalty over the years. It’s about time that OSEG executives evaluate their priorities and put the fans that ultimately keep them in business front of mind.
-Kyle Skinner
Photo: Winnipeg Blue Bombers. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.