Dru Brown hit Nic Demski from 23 yards with 44 seconds left as Winnipeg beat Toronto 25-22 in the East Semifinal on Saturday. The crossover Blue Bombers advance to the East Final in Montreal, and the Argonauts’ season is over at BMO Field.
FINAL: Winnipeg Blue Bombers 25, Toronto Argonauts 22. A season-high crowd of 21,786 watched Toronto lead 16-10 at halftime and 22-17 in the fourth quarter before Winnipeg scored the last eight points of the afternoon, the touchdown and the two-point convert both going to Demski.
How to watch: Winnipeg Blue Bombers vs Toronto Argonauts, Saturday, October 31, 2026, at BMO Field in Toronto
TV (Canada): TSN, CTV and RDS
Next up: Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Montreal Alouettes, East Final, Saturday, November 7, 2026, 3:00 p.m. ET, on TSN
Bombers Argonauts East Semifinal Turns On A Fumbled Punt
The winning drive started with a mistake Toronto could not survive. Argonauts punt returner Janarion Grant fumbled a punt return late in the fourth quarter, former Argo Thiadric Hansen recovered for Winnipeg, and the Blue Bombers took over at the Toronto 52. Five plays and 52 yards later, Brown found Demski for the 23-yard touchdown with 44 seconds remaining, then hit Demski again for the two-point convert and a 25-22 lead. Toronto’s season, which had been spent one score from the East Final all afternoon, ended on the next possession.
Brown finished 18 of 30 for 206 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions, a line that swung between shaky and decisive for three hours. He started because Zach Collaros was out with a rib injury, and he saved his best throw for the game’s last minute, the kind of moment he described plainly to TSN’s Matthew Scianitti afterward, talking about Demski on the go-ahead route:
If you’ve watched the film the last 9 years, he wins on those.
Demski caught all four of his targets for 72 yards and the touchdown, and CFL rushing leader Brady Oliveira carried 20 times for 95 yards behind him. Winnipeg won the game with its backup quarterback, on the road, as a crossover team, against a defence that had spent the afternoon taking the ball away from it.
Toronto Defence Forced Four Turnovers And Got Nine Points
The strange part of this semifinal is that Toronto’s defence did its job and Toronto still lost. The Argonauts forced four Winnipeg turnovers, two Brown interceptions and two fumbles, and turned all of that work into nine points: three Lirim Hajrullahu field goals. DaShaun Amos returned an interception 19 yards to set up a 42-yard field goal nine seconds into the second quarter. Dathan Hickey’s interception at the Toronto 16 set up a 37-yard field goal. A Soane Toia sack forced a Brown fumble that Shawn Lemon returned 23 yards, and Hajrullahu made it 16-10 from 28 yards before halftime.
Winnipeg’s own scoring came in bursts around those mistakes. The Blue Bombers won the toss, took the ball and drove 88 yards in five plays, finished by Ontaria Wilson’s 32-yard touchdown catch, a leaping grab where Wilson knocked the ball down with his right hand and hauled it in, on a drive extended by a 15-yard horsecollar penalty against Adarius Pickett. Toronto answered when Jonathan Moxey dropped a chance at an interception, the ball was tipped and hauled in by Dave Ungerer III for a first down, and Chad Kelly, a perfect 6 of 6 on the drive, hit CFL rookie of the year Tyler Kahmann for a 20-yard touchdown and a 7-7 tie. Sergio Castillo’s 42-yard field goal tied the game 10-10 in the second quarter, and Hajrullahu’s 10-yard field goal to open the second half, capping a 73-yard, 10-play drive, pushed Toronto’s lead to 19-10.
The turn changed late in the third. Winnipeg had just given the ball away again, Tim White fumbling after a hit by Alex Teubner for Lemon’s second recovery of the day, when Michael Fletcher knocked the ball out of Kelly’s hand as he dropped back to pass. David Reese picked it up and ran it back 52 yards for a touchdown, and in one play a 19-10 Toronto lead became 19-17 with a quarter to play. Winnipeg also wasted a gift, a too-many-men penalty that put the ball at the Toronto 38, when Castillo’s 47-yard field goal attempt into the wind went wide.
Kelly Injury Ends Toronto’s Margin For Error
Kelly’s afternoon ended the way his season kept threatening to. He completed 18 of 30 passes for a season-low 193 yards and one touchdown, then left midway through the fourth quarter with an apparent injury to his throwing arm or shoulder after taking pressure and being knocked down on a completed throw. Veteran Nick Arbuckle replaced him and went 2 of 6 for 25 yards. Kelly had not thrown a pass in a game since a hand injury on September 27 before returning for this semifinal, and Toronto’s offence, which stalled in Winnipeg territory all day, never found a finishing gear without him at full strength.
Hajrullahu’s fifth field goal of the game, from 41 yards, gave Toronto a 22-17 lead, and the Argonauts still had the game in their hands with 2:07 to play, facing third-and-one from their own 45. Toronto punted. The return sequence that followed produced the Grant fumble, the Brown drive and the Demski touchdown, and a team that forced four turnovers and allowed one offensive touchdown in the game’s first 59 minutes lost by three.
Crossover Bombers Get Montreal In The East Final
Winnipeg (9-9) finished fourth in the West and crossed over to the East playoffs with a better record than the third-place team in the East. The Blue Bombers are the 14th crossover team, all of them from the West, since the CFL adopted the format in 1996, and no crossover team has ever reached the Grey Cup. This was also Winnipeg’s second straight trip to the East Semifinal: the Blue Bombers lost 42-33 to Montreal in this game last year.
The rematch is set. Winnipeg travels to Montreal to face the Alouettes in the East Final on Saturday, November 7, with a ticket to the Grey Cup on the line, and the two teams split their season series 1-1. The Grey Cup itself is scheduled for Sunday, November 15 at McMahon Stadium in Calgary. Toronto, meanwhile, goes into the winter with the harder questions: a defence good enough to force four turnovers in a playoff game, an offence that turned them into nine points, and a quarterback whose season ended on the sideline for the second time in five weeks.
