The 34-year-old’s new deal is worth $210,000 in hard money with an additional $7,000 available in statistical, all-star, and awards incentives.

The five-foot-eleven, 192-pound target recorded his third consecutive 1,000-yard season in 2025 despite working with four different starting quarterbacks: Dru Brown, Matthew Shiltz, Dustin Crum, and Tyrie Adams. He recorded 78 receptions for 1,019 yards and eight touchdowns over 18 regular-season games.

Hardy was the third-highest paid receiver in the CFL last season, earning $227,000 for his efforts. He’s been named a CFL all-star once and East Division all-star three times since signing with Ottawa in 2022. He has registered 304 catches for 3,787 yards with 16 touchdowns over 59 career regular-season CFL games.

The native of Vanceboro, N.C. led the CFL with 97 receptions in 2024 and ranked second with 1,343 receiving yards. He earned $147,000 that year.

Hardy was selected in the fourth round of the 2015 NFL Draft by the Atlanta Falcons out of East Carolina University. He posted 95 receptions for 946 yards with nine touchdowns over 73 career NFL games and earned over $3.8 million USD in five years with the team.

With Hardy returning, the Redblacks have the team’s top two pass catchers from last year — Eugene Lewis being the other — under contract for the 2026 CFL season.

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Murphy was originally hired by Toronto in 2019 and was elevated to vice president of player personnel after former general manager Jim Popp was fired. He helped build two Grey Cup championship teams during his tenure, while the Argos also finished 16-2 in 2023, setting a new franchise record.

He was suspended indefinitely by the CFL in December 2021 for allegedly being involved in a physical altercation with a Hamilton Tiger-Cats fan following the East Final, and was captured on video allegedly saying a homophobic slur. Murphy was later terminated by the Argonauts after an internal review into the incident. However, he was quietly brought back in April 2023 after his suspension was lifted by the league without a formal announcement.

Murphy was also mentioned by name in the lawsuit brought against the Argonauts and quarterback Chad Kelly by a former athletic trainer following the 2023 season. The plaintiff alleged that she informed the assistant GM of inappropriate conduct by Kelly in November 2023 and that he stated she “opened a can of worms that didn’t need to be opened.” The Argos and Kelly denied those allegations, and the lawsuit was later settled out of court.

A longtime CFL scout and executive, Murphy has previously worked for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Calgary Stampeders and Winnipeg Blue Bombers in football personnel roles. He won two Grey Cups during his eight-year stint with the Stampeders.

The Argonauts have made a number of significant moves to reshape their football operations department following the departure of head coach Ryan Dinwiddie to the Ottawa Redblacks. Mike Miller was hired as the team’s new head coach, and Canadian Football Hall of Famer John Hufnagel was brought over from the Calgary Stampeders to serve as a special advisor to him and general manager Pinball Clemons. Former Toronto GM Jim Barker is also re-joining the team in a still undisclosed player personnel role.

The Toronto Argonauts finished third in the East Division standings in 2025 with a 5-13 record, missing the playoffs for the first time since 2019. Franchise quarterback Chad Kelly was unable to play all season due to a fractured leg he suffered in the East Final the previous year, giving way to Nick Arbuckle, who threw for 4,370 yards, 26 touchdowns, and 15 interceptions to be named the team’s candidate for Most Outstanding Player.

The Argonauts ranked seventh in net offence, sixth in net defence, and seventh with a turnover differential of minus-eight. The club’s leading rusher was Spencer Brown with 314 yards, the leading receiver was Dejon Brissett with 907 yards, and the leading tackler was Cameron Judge with 79 tackles. Toronto ranked ninth in attendance with average crowds of 15,109, which was a 0.1 percent decrease from the previous year.

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The 44-year-old has been with the Argonauts since 2022, helping the team win two Grey Cups in four seasons. Under his tutelage, returners Javon Leake (2023) and Janarion Grant (2024) were both named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Special Teams Player, while kicker Lirim Hajrullahu was the runner-up in 2025 after setting an all-time CFL record with 12 field goals made outside of 50 yards.

Donovan played three seasons with the Concordia Stingers (2002-04) and was a two-time first-team All-Canadian at linebacker. He also won the Presidents’ Trophy in his final collegiate season as the top defensive player in all of U Sports football.

The native of Laconia, N.H. turned to coaching after suffering a career-ending knee injury and had stints at New Hampshire, Western, and McGill before becoming the head coach at Concordia in 2014. He held the role for four seasons before becoming the special teams coordinator with the Montreal Alouettes in 2018, a job he held through 2021.

According to sources, as many as a half-dozen people have been interviewed for Toronto’s head coach job, including several other members of staff. On Friday, 3DownNation confirmed reports that quarterbacks coach Mike Miller and receivers coach Pete Costanza had interviewed.

The job became available after Ryan Dinwiddie, the team’s two-time Grey Cup-winning head coach, left for the Ottawa Redblacks in order to become head coach and general manager. Toronto unsuccessfully tried to woo Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ head coach Mike O’Shea, and has also reportedly targeted former Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach Kent Austin.

The Argonauts finished third in the East Division standings in 2025 with a 5-13 record, missing the playoffs for the first time since 2019. Kelly was unable to play all season due to a fractured leg he suffered in the East Final in 2024. Nick Arbuckle threw for 4,370 yards, 26 touchdowns, and 15 interceptions to be named the team’s Most Outstanding Player.

Toronto ranked seventh in net offence, sixth in net defence, and seventh with a turnover differential of minus-eight. The team’s leading rusher was Spencer Brown with 314 yards, the leading receiver was Dejon Brissett with 907 yards, and the leading tackler was Cameron Judge with 79 tackles. The Argos ranked ninth in attendance with 15,109 average fans at BMO Field, which was a 0.1 percent decrease from the previous year.

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“From a playing standpoint, I am disappointed. I’m frustrated. I don’t think we played good football this year on offence, and that starts with me,” Collaros told the media at Princess Auto Stadium on Sunday.

“There was a lot of ups and downs this season, many times where I did not think we played up to our standard and just good football. That can’t be just directed in one place, and it’s very hard for me after games to point the finger at anybody but myself. No matter what situation we’re put in, what the call is, or how the preparation was for the week, I always revert back to, ‘I could have done something to make this play right to help the team.’ It’s very hard for me to really expound upon that.”

Winnipeg’s passing game finished last in the CFL this season as part of an offensive attack that ranked fifth in net offence, fifth in yards per play, and seventh in scoring.

It’d be easy to point to the departure of Kenny Lawler, the ACL tear sustained by Dalton Schoen, and the ineffectiveness of free-agent addition Dillon Mitchell for the team’s aerial struggles, though Collaros felt the team had the players it needed in order to be successful. Instead, he spoke to challenges that started all the way back in training camp with an insinuation that the passing game lacked an overall plan or identity.

“I think reps matter a lot, trying to figure out what you’re good at and kind of honing in on that and growing that. We need to get better in passing, for sure. I think that’s not just this season, I think the last couple seasons — not just last year, but the year before, too — it’s gotten tougher, for sure,” said Collaros.

“(In training camp) we repped a lot of things that we didn’t rep during the season. I didn’t get a lot of reps with the guys who were playing. My situation put us in jeopardy there with the suspension and trying to manage that. I think it’s getting reps — reps with the players, reps with what concepts do we like? On second-and-six, second-and-five with the game on the line, what are we going to call because we know we can execute the play? I don’t know if we had that this year, so getting good at something, I think, matters.”

The 37-year-old passer threw for 3,048 yards, 17 touchdowns, and 16 interceptions over 13 starts this season, posting a 6-7 record. Outside of the yardage, which was much higher last season, those numbers are essentially the same as what Collaros recorded in 2024.

For a player who won back-to-back Most Outstanding Player awards not too long ago, it seems fair to question if the native of Steubenville, Ohio, is in decline. Though he doesn’t see himself diminishing as a player, he wouldn’t argue with anyone who said otherwise.

“I don’t physically feel that way,” he said. “Mentally, I don’t feel that way, but I’d be hard-pressed to argue with you if you said that I didn’t play good football this season.”

Collaros said his lease in Winnipeg runs through the end of November, an arrangement he and his family made with the expectation of reaching the Grey Cup. Though it appears they plan to spend more time in the city before moving back to their offseason home near Toronto, he has no plans to attend the Grey Cup regardless of which teams are in it.

As for what’s next for him and the Blue Bombers, Collaros not only plans to be back next year, but he wants the supporting cast to remain the same. That might be impossible given that the team has 33 pending free agents, including Brady Oliveira, Nic Demski, and Willie Jefferson.

“I don’t think it’s the end of an era. I don’t even know how to categorize it. If you’re grouping things together, when you make it to five straight Grey Cups and then you don’t, I guess it’s kind of a cut off there, but I think we still have the pieces in place,” he said.

“I’d like to continue to do this. I love this sport, I love this league, I love this organization, first and foremost, and I love my teammates. I want to do it. I want to continue to do it, but I want to play good football, and I want the guys who have been here — Jake Thomas, Patrick Neufeld, Stanley Bryant, Shayne Gauthier — for the run. I’d like for them to be here to do it because I think we can continue to do it.”

“Having high expectations are a great thing. You should have high expectations of yourself, and we should have high expectations of our organization. I think it’s why people want to come play here. I think it’s why those of us who have been here for six-plus years or five-plus years want to continue to come back and keep doing this: it’s because of the expectations. If it was just to make the playoffs each year, a lot of us would have retired by now, but that chase is why a lot of us, I think, continue to want to do this.”

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Even with the gift of hindsight, however, it doesn’t sound like head coach Ryan Dinwiddie would have handled the situation any differently.

“I think there was a lot of unknown going into it. I think we did the best we could with it. Obviously, we’ve got to take care of the player first, but also we’ve got to look at the organization moving forward for the future,” said Dinwiddie during his end-of-year media availability.

“Last week, he was moving around better than he has. He’s shown a lot of growth as far as physicality, as far as with his leg. I just didn’t think he was mobile enough to play his game. I thought Nick (Arbuckle) stepped up and did a lot of good things for us, so I’m pretty happy with quarterback one, quarterback two, and we got a lot of youth there.”

Dinwiddie repeatedly suggested throughout the season that Kelly wasn’t far from reentering the lineup, calling him “week-to-week” as early as late July. The bench boss also denied at the time that Kelly had suffered any setbacks, though general manager Mike ‘Pinball’ Clemons suggested the opposite when speaking to the media on Sunday.

“(Kelly’s recovery) was going on par for a period of time, and then there was a period in the summer where we found out that there were some things that were not happening as fast as we hoped that they would,” he said. “With that, I don’t think you want to simply count him out if there’s what looked like a good possibility that he would be at least back by the first third of the season.”

The Argonauts moved Kelly to the six-game injured list in late July, which is where he spent the rest of the season. He spent the first seven weeks of the year on the one-game injured list, a strong indication that the team thought there was a reasonable chance he’d be ready to play by the midway point of the summer.

In the end, Nick Arbuckle threw for 4,370 yards, 26 touchdowns, and 15 interceptions to go 5-10 as a starter. The 32-year-old, who led the Argonauts to a Grey Cup victory last year following Kelly’s postseason injury, set all-new career-highs and shattered his previous single-season best of 11 touchdown passes.

It’s clear that the Argonauts expect Arbuckle to return behind Kelly next season as Clemons said the team has “two solid quarterbacks going into next year.”

Third-year CFL quarterback Jarret Doege made three starts for the Argonauts, throwing for 905 yards, four touchdowns, and seven interceptions. Rookie passers Tucker Horn and Max Duggan also saw limited action, the latter of whom threw a touchdown pass in Toronto’s season-ending loss to the Calgary Stampeders.

Dinwiddie, who played five seasons in the CFL at quarterback with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders, likes what he sees from his team’s passers.

“I feel good about that position group,” he said. “If we just bring all those guys back to camp, I’d be pretty happy.”

It’s never easy to go from winning a Grey Cup to missing the postseason the following year. Though it’s clear Dinwiddie isn’t happy with how things played out, he’s also trying to maintain perspective on how things transpired in 2025.

“This year was disappointing, but at the same time, we got to have a lens on it,” said the 44-year-old. “We had injuries, all these things — it doesn’t really matter. How can we get better as an organization? That starts with me. I’m going to work. It’s unfortunate we’re watching their teams play for something and we’re getting a head start on next year.”

The post Ryan Dinwiddie: Toronto Argonauts did ‘best we could’ with Chad Kelly injury appeared first on 3DownNation.

The 24-year-old native of Blue Springs, Mo. has seen action at cornerback in each of the team’s past three games, though he’s yet to make a start. In Week 8, he took the place of a benched Marquise Bridges at field-side cornerback, then he replaced an injured Jamal Parker in Week 9. Last week, he took over at boundary cornerback from Terrell Bonds, who announced on Tuesday that he’s out for the season due to a knee injury.

Vaval has made nine defensive tackles and three special teams tackles through eight career CFL games but has become a household name due to his work as a returner. The five-foot-eleven, 163-pound speedster leads the CFL with 528 punt return yards, ranks fourth with 457 kickoffs return yards, and has two return touchdowns.

With Bonds being moved to the six-game injured list, the Blue Bombers have promoted rookie defensive back Cam Allen to the active roster. The six-foot-one, 195-pound native of Bluefield, Va. was a standout at Purdue University where he made 203 total tackles, eight tackles for loss, 13 interceptions, 31 pass knockdowns, four forced fumbles, and one blocked kick over 56 games. He has been listed as the backup safety behind Redha Kramdi.

The rest of Winnipeg’s roster remains unchanged following last week’s loss to the Calgary Stampeders, during which the team struggled offensively in the second half. Zach Collaros completed 21-of-26 pass attempts for 214 yards and one touchdown, though almost half that yardage went to running back Brady Oliveira as Kevens Clercius, the team’s leading receiver, managed only 32 yards.

Players who remain on Winnipeg’s one-game injured list include running back and returner Peyton Logan, offensive lineman Micah Vanterpool, defensive lineman Cameron Lawson, and defensive back Jamal Parker. Those who remain on the six-game injured list include receivers Kody Case and Dalton Schoen, offensive lineman Eric Lofton, linebacker Lane Novak, and defensive backs Bonds and Enock Makonzo.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers (4-4) will host the Ottawa Redblacks (3-6) at Princess Auto Stadium on Thursday, August 14 with kickoff slated for 8:30 p.m. EDT. The Redblacks are coming off a 46-42 win over the Toronto Argonauts, while the Blue Bombers suffered a walk-off loss to the Calgary Stampeders.

The weather forecast in Winnipeg calls for a high of 29 degrees with a 60 percent chance of showers and a risk of a thunderstorm. The game will be broadcast on TSN and RDS in Canada, CBS Sports Network in the United States, and CFL+ internationally. Radio listeners can tune-in on TSN 1200 in Ottawa and 680 CJOB in Winnipeg.

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