The Week 12 schedule continues Friday with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (2-8) on the road taking on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (4-6). Kickoff from Princess Auto Stadium is at 8:30 p.m. ET. Below, we analyze FanDuel Sportsbook’s lines around the Tiger-Cats vs. Blue Bombers odds, and make our expert CFL picks and predictions.
Hamilton, after starting the season 0-5 and winning 2 in a row, has lost 3 straight games. They lost to Edmonton 47-22 as 1-point home underdogs last week.
After starting the year 0-4, Winnipeg has won 4 of its last 6 games and 2 straight. Last week, they beat BC 20-11 on the road as 3-point underdogs.
Odds provided by FanDuel Sportsbook; access USA TODAY Sports Scores and Sports Betting Odds hub for a full list. Lines last updated at 10:22 a.m. ET.
Winnipeg’s offense is primed to explode against Hamilton’s struggling defense
With Zach Collaros back in MOP form, we anticipate the Blue Bombers quarterback airing it out on Friday night when Winnipeg plays host to a vulnerable Hamilton defense.
Despite an 0-4 start to the season, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have started to gain traction with a 4-2 mark over their last six games.
One of the biggest factors in their turnaround has been the play of two-time MOP quarterback Zach Collaros, and my Tiger-Cats vs. Blue Bombers predictions expect the Winnipeg pivot to shine against a leaky Hamilton defense in Week 12.
Find out more in our CFL picks for Friday, August 23.
My best bet
Zach Collaros Over 291.5 passing yards (-114 at FanDuel)
My analysis
What started as a season from hell for the defending West Division champs has since been steered in the other direction, as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers enter Week 12 with a 4-6 record, just one game back of both Saskatchewan and BC.
The pre-season favorites in the Grey Cup odds stumbled out of the gate with four consecutive losses, and Zach Collaros was one of the biggest reasons why. The 35-year-old failed to throw a single touchdown pass in his first four starts and didn't eclipse 300+ passing yards until Winnipeg's first win in Week 6.
However, since the Bombers finally landed in the win column, Collaros has reverted to his MOP ways by averaging exactly 291.5 passing yards per game over his last four starts. With Ontaria Wilson ranking sixth in league receiving yards and Kenny Lawler back from injury, the Bombers receiving corps is also much more improved than it was earlier in the season.
Entering Friday's matchup fourth in league passing yards, Collaros should tear up a Hamilton Tiger-Cats defense allowing a league-worst 31.7 points per game while giving up more than 291.5 passing yards in eight of those 10 contests.
Zach Collaros Over 291.5 passing yards Blue Bombers -9.5
Along with our best bet, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers should take care of business against a reeling Ticats team that has dropped three of its last three games by an average margin of 17.3 points.
Princess Auto Stadium remains one of the toughest venues for road teams, and the Bombers should further benefit from the absence of both Ticats' starting QB Taylor Powell and running back James Butler, who are sidelined with injuries.
Learn how to bet a same-game parlay with these helpful tips and strategies.
Winnipeg is 36-16-1 ATS in its last 53 home games. Find more CFL betting trends for Tiger-Cats vs. Blue Bombers.
Tiger-Cats: Taylor Powell QB (Out), Tyler Ternowski WR (Out), Luther Hakunavanhu WR (Out), Daniel Bell LB (Out), Brendan Borner OL (Questionable), Nate Dumoulin Duguay OL (Out), Lawrence Woods DB (Questionable). Blue Bombers: Michael Chris-Ike RB (Out), Adam Bighill LB (Doubtful), Lucky Ogbevoen DL (Questionable).
Find our latest CFL injury reports.
The new defensive coordinator for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats is a familiar name in the CFL
Members of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers offence could be excused if they begin to drool when looking at the defence they’ll face on Friday.
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats have given up a CFL-high 33 offensive touchdowns and 334 points in total — the only team over the 300 mark.
Just what the doctor ordered for a Winnipeg offence still looking to hit paydirt a little more frequently?
Not so fast.
Just how quickly can Jones make an impact on the Tiger-Cats’ defence?
“Immediately,” Bombers boss Mike O’Shea said as his team returned to practice on Wednesday. “He’s really good at getting guys to compete and play hard. He’s got some things he likes to do. Whether or not he can get that implemented — I’m pretty sure he can. I don’t know that defensive football is as tough to implement as offensive football. So I’m sure he can get things done very quickly.
“But he certainly will have a group that’s motivated to play.”
Coming off a 20-11 win over the Lions in B.C. on Sunday, the Bombers already had limited time to study what the Ticats do on defence.
Now they’re not sure at all.
“It’s funny, you don’t really know what to watch,” receiver Nic Demski said. “They’ve got a new guy over there. You’ve got to figure out how you’re going to attack them. But if we just worry about us and we figure out what they do as the game goes on — we’ll have a pretty good understanding of how Jones likes to play. He’s been in the West the last five, six years.
“We’ll see what the flavour of the week is.”
Demski is coming off his sweetest game of the season, a six-catch, 109-yard outing, including his second touchdown of the year.
He says it helped him, and everyone, to have the aerial threat of Kenny Lawler back in the lineup.
“It gives the whole team confidence,” he said. “The guy’s like a brother to me. It gives me a spark as well as the other guys on the field.”
Up front, the big men had a strong game, too.
“We’re getting into a groove,” is how Stanley Bryant put it. “Winning our one-on-ones, doing our jobs, communicating. We’ve been building and building. We still left some things out there, let some guys down on short yardage and things like that. But we’ll find a way to fix it.”
Bryant and Co. will face old friend Casey Sayles on Friday.
“One of the better D-tackles in the league,” Bryant said. But …
“Chris Jones is in now, so you never know what to expect.”
The Bombers remain last in the CFL with just six touchdowns through the air this season.
“The offence still has, from the potential, what we’d like to get to, we’ve still got some areas to improve,” Demski said. “But we’re playing good football. We like Serge and the way he kicks the ball, but we’d rather be putting the points on the board than him.”
Winnipeg is the league’s lowest-scoring team, at 20.8 points per game.
On the flip side, nobody’s been stingier defensively than the Bombers’ 19.7-point average.
The last two games against the Lions saw the defence give up a combined 11 points.
“With our defence playing the way it is right now it takes the pressure off us,” Demski acknowledged. “But at the same time we’ve still got goals to fulfill.”
While the ground game started slowly in Vancouver, by the end Brady Oliveira was doing his thing behind an O-line doing theirs.
“When I get to the second level, it’s now my job to do something with that,” Oliveira said. “Make people miss, throw that stiff-arm, run people over — whatever it is to do more, break tackles and make explosive runs.
“They do a great job the entire game of just wearing on the defensive front, really just mauling them all game so that when the time does come, you know it’s time.”
On defence, the Bombers could be without middle linebacker and captain Adam Bighill, who went down during the game against the Lions and didn’t practice on Wednesday.
Then again, count him out at your own peril.
“You saw him play in the Grey Cup,” O’Shea said, reminding us all how a torn calf muscle didn’t stop No. 4 from hitting the field in the November classic.
For what it’s worth, the Wednesday injury report showed Bighill as doubtful with a hamstring injury.
The pressure is on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ front office
You can be sure there weren’t too many Hamilton Tiger-Cats fans shocked by the news that the team made a change at defensive co-ordinator this week. In time to prepare for Friday’s visit to Winnipeg.
Sure, some might be surprised the team actually did it. But they weren’t surprised that this was on the table.
In a lousy season that has seen the black and gold fall to 2-8 — and get slaughtered by the Edmonton Elks on Saturday during which the Ticats gave up a season-high 47 points — the defence was struggling badly. When you get to that point, something has to be done. Which usually means someone has to pay the price.
In this case, that was Mark Washington.
After a terrific start to his tenure in Hamilton — in his first two seasons, the team had the best or second-best defence in the league and went to the Grey Cup both times — things have taken a wrong turn.
This year the Ticats’ D has given up the most points in the entire CFL while taking the second-most penalties and creating the fewest turnovers, including only four interceptions in 10 games. It’s been nowhere near good enough most nights.
So now we get to see if Chris Jones can figure it out.
“We were looking for a spark,” head coach Scott Milanovich says. “Obviously, I’ve known Chris for a long time. Know exactly what I’m going to get.”
There’s no question Jones has an elite track record in this role. He’s won two Grey Cups as a defensive co-ordinator — including one in Toronto while serving under Scott Milanovich — and has been seen as one of the best around.
Of course, those with shorter memories will look at what he’s done more recently as head coach of Edmonton in which he went 8-33 before being fired and say this is a bad choice. We’ll see.
The hope would be that with his responsibilities now limited to running the D, perhaps he can find some magic again. Maybe a fresh set of eyes can spot a few things that lead to a handful of tweaks here and there that can have a significant impact. Maybe just a new voice and a new message can increase the octane level and produce some better results.
“It’s a different scheme, for sure,” Milanovich says. “One that, obviously, I’ve got a lot of familiarity with. We had success together.”
But the spotlight isn’t just on him.
This move completes the set for the Ticats. In the past year and a few days, all three co-ordinators have now been changed. Milanovich took over the offence from Tommy Condell last Aug. 7, early in July Dennis McKnight took control of special teams from Paul Boudreau (who’d just been hired in February), and now things have been shuffled on defence.
Making these kinds of significant changes means you have to believe a different scheme, a different tone, a different attitude, a different something will ignite a change in performance on the field.
If Jones arrives with the right recipe and this beleaguered defence suddenly becomes considerably more difficult to play against in the weeks ahead — it’s probably too much to expect a miracle by Friday — you can chalk up the problems to the last guy and applaud the organization’s willingness to fix what wasn’t working.
You might argue it’s unfortunate it took so long to come to that conclusion, but good it finally happened. On to better days. Maybe not this year. It might be too late for that. But soon.
But what if it doesn’t? What if things don’t look all that different?
That’s where things get sticky for the men in charge of personnel. Namely president of football operations Orlondo Steinauer and the rest of the brass.
Because if not much changes — on defence specifically but more broadly in the wins and losses column in general — there are two possible and reasonable conclusions fans can draw.
One, they and Milanovich still have the wrong co-ordinators, which wouldn’t exactly be a ringing endorsement of the decision-makers’ ability to evaluate and hire the best people for the job.
Or two, this really wasn’t about the co-ordinators, but rather, it’s about the roster this football operations group has assembled. It would mean the players that have been brought in here to end a 25-year championship drought simply aren’t good enough.
If that’s the case, the spotlight would have to pivot from anyone coaching to the architects who built a squad that appears to be getting further away from a Grey Cup rather than closer to it.
Key Notes for the Matchup
In the past month, the Bombers’ defence hasn’t surrendered 20 points in a single game. In fact, the 46 points it has given up in total to Saskatchewan, Toronto, B.C. and B.C. again is one fewer than Hamilton surrendered to Edmonton last weekend … On the flip side, Winnipeg is the lowest-scoring team in the league, averaging just 20.8 points per game … Hamilton will be without QB Taylor Powell, WR Luther Hakunavanhu and WR Tyler Ternowski, all who suffered head injuries last week … Also not playing will be LB Ray Wilborn (practice roster), DB Kenneth George Jr. (released), DB Carthell Flowers-Lloyd, LB Daniel Bell and OL Jordan Murray who are all on the one-game injured list … Coming into the lineup are QB Taulia Tagovailoa, WR Brendan O’Leary-Orange, DB Will Sunderland, DB Siriman Bagayogo, OL Brendan Bordner, WR Dezmon Patmon, WR Jordan Byrd and DL Benoit Marion … Bombers LB Adam Bighill is out with a hamstring injury. He has been moved to the six-game injured list … The Ticats have 22 passing touchdowns this season, the Bombers have just six … QB Zach Collaros has thrown just five TD passes this year while tossing nine interceptions … While Winnipeg is first or second in many defensive categories, one area in which it struggles is against the run. The Bombers are last there, giving up 110.9 yards per game … WR Shemar Bridges has 64 receptions this season, which puts him on pace for 115. The rookie record is 89, set by Derel Walker in 2015 … Chris Jones has now worked for six CFL teams. The only ones he hasn’t called home yet are Ottawa, Winnipeg and B.C. … Hamilton is the most-penalized team in the league. Winnipeg is least-flagged.
Game Details
Hamilton (2-8) at Winnipeg (4-6)
When Friday 8:30 p.m.
Where Princess Auto Stadium
Weather 23 degrees and clear
TV TSN
Audio Y108 and Ticats Audio Network
Last week Hamilton lost 47-22 to Edmonton, Winnipeg beat B.C. 20-11
Last year Hamilton beat Winnipeg 29-23 in September after losing 42-31 to the Bombers in the season opener
