When you are the biggest guys in the room, its awfully hard to avoid being compared to the elephant in it. But when it comes to Canadian offensive linemen in the CFL, a scapegoat is the more appropriate animal metaphor.
With six of the nine CFL franchises spending time with a backup quarterback under centre this year, you’ve likely heard the Canadian OL slander spouted by everyone from drunken fans to respected analysts. This league has had issues with injuries at the most important position in sports, and the root cause, at least according to this school of thought, is that the ratio forces sub-par National blockers to matchup against talented American pass rushers. The end result could only ever be disaster.
Those lazy hot takes were pretty easy to ignore earlier in the year, when it was clear that majority of QB injuries or absences couldn’t be traced to Canadians. Nathan Rourke got hurt with four Americans in front of him, Trevor Harris took a late hit as retaliation, Zach Collaros failed to pick up his phone in the offseason, and both Chad Kelly and Davis Alexander traced their injuries back to before the season began.
Ottawa’s Dru Brown was always the most difficult one to dismiss and his second injury of the season has made the cries of Canadian incompetence even more intense. This time, it was a clear homegrown error that led to a hellacious headshot from DaShaun Amos, as both right tackle Zack Pelehos and fullback Anthony Gosselin missed the blitz pickup. Everyone makes mistakes, but before we decide to cry ratio-induced foul, it is worth examining whether the statistics back up the complaints made by armchair protection experts.
So far this season, 77 different offensive linemen have played at least a snap of action on offence — 29 Americans and 48 Canadians. According to the latest data published by ProFootballFocus, Canadians have collectively surrendered pressure on 4.02 percent of their pass blocking opportunities, while Americans have allowed pressure on 4.92 percent of their snaps.
The fact that Americans surrender more pressure than Canadians has been true for all three of the seasons in which PFF has tracked CFL data, dating back to 2023. Admittedly, these numbers are slightly skewed because a higher percentage of Canadians play interior offensive line positions, which are inherently less likely to surrender pressure.
National tackles typically have a higher pressure rate than Americans and this year that discrepancy is wider than ever — 7.55 percent compared to 5.32 percent. However, that has more to do with the outstanding play of American bookends like Jermarcus Hardrick and Jarell Broxton — who has surrendered just a single pressure this year — than it does any passport-based supremacy.
For example, Pelehos, who has made two starts at right tackle since returning from injury, is in the bottom quarter of the league with a pressure rate of 6.49 percent. Those calling for his ousting may be surprised to learn there are nine Americans who have started games at tackle this year who have a higher rate of pressure allowed, a list which notably includes Darta Lee (9.03 percent) who started the first four games of the season at that spot for Ottawa.
There are also three Canadians who have struggled worse than Pelehos, including a couple of surprising names. Ryan Hunter, the league’s reigning Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman, was struggling badly before being hit by a vehicle on the way to practice, and Brett Boyko, who had the highest PFF grade of any tackle in the league last year, is also in the bottom six offensive linemen according to this statistic. The fact that both players also have multiple teammates worse than them in the metric is a good reminder that offensive line play can be very situationally dependent.
Still, when you take into account all of the subjective grading done on each player and adjust it for percentage of snaps played by nationality, Canadians have a better combined overall (59.5) and pass-blocking grade (53.4) than their American counterparts, who are grading out at 58.7 and 52.1 in those categories through Week 7. This is unusual, as import linemen have typically graded out slightly higher as a group — 66.8 compared to 64.3 in 2024, and 63.2 compared to 62.2 in 2023.
The main takeaway? CFL offensive linemen — at least the starters — are basically the same regardless of nationality. Intuitively, this makes sense given how many Canadians are coming from NCAA programs and the rising coaching level in U Sports.
If you were expecting me to bang the table about the overall superiority of National blockers, there is absolutely no evidence to support that stance. There are some bad Canadian players in this league, just as there are some absolutely atrocious Americans, and the ratio will always create a certain level of difficulty for teams.
But in an era with more prevalent homegrown skill position talent than ever before, teams are both more willing and able to play the best players possible along their front. More often than you think, that player is actually the Canadian. For every Zack Pelehos that fans want to take off the field, there is the risk of a Hampton Ergle waiting in the wings to surrender twice the pressure in half the playing time.
The reality is that offensive line play is an issue in the CFL, but that problem transcends borders. It is the position that takes the longest to develop, with many players not peaking until their thirties, and the modern reduction on padded practices makes it much tougher to learn by doing.
Even the NFL is struggling to find enough players that have both the skill and size to effectively play in the trenches, which results in more outliers who would have previously made their way to the CFL sticking around on expanded practice rosters for longer. Add in the floundering UFL, and there is far more demand than supply. As a result, there are offensive linemen who are out of their depth at every level of the pro football pyramid.
CFL front offices are adapting to this problem by recruiting more fleet-footed American guards, hoping they can become tackles in Canada. When that doesn’t work, teams are becoming more flexible in their ratio along the offensive line and playing more non-traditional combinations.
Not every one of those is a winner, but the gap in talent between meat-and-potatoes Canadian offensive linemen and the Americans flooding across the border to play alongside them has never been smaller. It’s about time that our discourse began to reflect that reality, instead of blaming systemic issues on the local kids who carve out careers in this league.
