It’s been a season to remember and forget for Bo Levi Mitchell and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Hamilton (7-10) heads into its regular-season finale Friday in Ottawa assured of finishing fourth in the East Division and missing the CFL playoffs. But Mitchell is poised to claim his first CFL passing title.
Mitchell, 34, threw for 450 yards and five TDs in Hamilton’s 42-20 home win over Calgary on Friday night. It was Mitchell’s first victory over his former team and pushed him over the 5,000-yard plateau for the third time but first since 2018.
Mitchell heads to Ottawa with 5,026 passing yards, well ahead of Winnipeg’s Zach Collaros (4,005). So, barring a record performance of epic proportions by Collaros on Saturday versus Montreal, Mitchell — a two-time Grey Cup champion and twice the league’s outstanding player — will be the 5,000-yard club’s lone member this season and a CFL passing champion for the first time since starting his career in Canada with Calgary in 2012.
Mitchell is close to both his best CFL campaign (5,385 yards in 2016) and Henry Burris’s club record (5,367 yards in 2012). Mitchell broke Burris’s club mark for completions Friday (he has 395, four more than Burris’s ’12 total) and with four more TD passes would tie his career high (35, set in 2018).
Heady stuff considering Mitchell was benched earlier this season when he and Scott Milanovich, Hamilton’s head coach/offensive co-ordinator, weren’t always on the same page offensively.
“It means a lot,” Mitchell said. “It means a lot to show the work put in (during) the off-season, it means a lot to show what this offence has done all year despite the record.
“The milestone, the 5,000 (yards) is something I’ll appreciate later on looking back on a career, resume or whatnot. It feels good to get there as an offence and just continue to try to be No. 1 offence in the league.”
Hamilton currently leads the CFL in net offence (398.6 yards per game), passing (326.6) and aerial TDs (34) and is second in offensive TDs (46) and offensive points (26.2). The Ticats also look to finish their season with a sixth win in seven games.
Hamilton opened ’24 by losing its first five games and nine-of-11 overall. It climbed back into playoff contention with four straight wins before being eliminated by Toronto’s 14-11 road victory over Winnipeg on Oct. 11.
“It took us a while (to learn how to win) and it took us a while as coaches to figure out who could do what, who we needed to rely on and who maybe we couldn’t rely on and make some changes,” Milanovich said. “I’m proud of the way they’ve played the last six or seven weeks.”
Hamilton could also finish with three 1,000-yard receivers. Tim White (72 catches, 1,126 yards, eight TDs) is already there for a third straight year while Steven Dunbar Jr. (66 receptions, 979 yards, five TDs) and Canadian Kiondre Smith (71 catches, 881 yards, six TDs) are within striking distance.
There could’ve been four had rookie Shemar Bridges (83 catches, 933 yards, four TDs) not suffered a season-ending leg last month.
“That would be great,” White said. “Right now we’re just fighting for anything and everything that we can get.
“We had a lot of close games early that we let slip through our hands but we obviously battled back late in the season. But you’ve got to capitalize early and that’s what it is at the end of the day.”
Milanovich expects to field his best lineup Friday and go for the win. How long Mitchell plays, though, isn’t clear as before last week’s contest Milanovich suggested wanting to get backup Taylor Powell some reps but Mitchell’s solid start (four first-half TD passes) made that an impossibility.
“I truly didn’t have a plan and as hot as Bo was, I wasn’t going to take him out of the game,” Milanovich said. “He earned the right to stay in there, for sure.”
Hamilton can also expect Ottawa’s best. The Redblacks (8-8-1) showed tremendous resiliency in Saturday’s 38-31 road loss to Toronto by outscoring the Argos 25-0 in the fourth quarter before enduring a fifth straight defeat.
Ottawa will return to Toronto for the East Division semifinal Nov. 2 and doesn’t want to head into the playoffs riding a lengthy losing streak.
“It’s a very meaningful game for us because we’ve got to show we can play like that for four quarters,” said Ottawa head coach Bob Dyce. “What we’re going to do is have a great sense of urgency this week at practice, make sure that we start fast and finish everything (Friday).”