What if Toronto had held on and the Redblacks' losing streak had run into November

Every CFL season turns on a handful of plays that barely register in the standings column. For the Ottawa Redblacks in 2026, the clearest one came with half a minute left against Toronto. Change it, and the season changes shape.

The play that held up the season

Toronto led 39-33 with 30 seconds left at Ottawa. The Argonauts had the ball, the lead and the clock. The Redblacks needed a touchdown, and Barnes threw a 24-yard touchdown pass to Eberhardt to tie it. Ottawa went on to win 40-39.

That result ended a 22-game losing streak that began last year. It was the first win of the Redblacks' season, and it came against a division rival.

The hypothetical

Start with one change: Barnes and Eberhardt do not connect, or a Toronto defender breaks up the throw, and the Argonauts walk out with a 39-33 win. Nothing else about the game moves. The Redblacks still lose by one score, the kind of margin that makes a team feel close without producing a single point in the standings.

The streak then does not end. It carries on as a twenty-third straight loss, and it keeps stretching across two seasons, which is the kind of number that follows a franchise into the next training camp. A drought that long stops being a bad stretch and becomes a story about the organization itself.

Toronto's side of it is just as sharp. A hold there would have been a straightforward road win, the sort a contender banks and forgets. Instead the Argonauts gave up the tying score with the clock almost gone and lost the game after it, which is the kind of result that sticks in a locker room.

What one touchdown buys

The honest reading is that one swing play does not rescue a season. A single tie-breaking touchdown, or the lack of one, does not move a team out of a deep hole. What it changes is smaller and still real: the length of a streak, the tone of the week afterward and the answer to the question every player faces about whether this group knows how to finish.

For a team that went so long without winning, a comeback in the final minute carries weight beyond the score. It showed Ottawa could trail late, stay in the game and still make the play. That is a trait coaches can point to when they build the next roster.

The what-if cuts both ways. Ottawa had one finish that went its way, and the margin between that night and another loss was a single throw. Fans of a team that spent a season on the wrong side of close games can reasonably wonder how many of the others sat that near to the line. The streak ended because a pass landed. The same pass, a step off, and the Redblacks would still be waiting.