3DownNation CFL best bets: Week 2

Photo: Winnipeg Blue Bombers

It’s Week 2 in the Canadian Football League, and for some reason we only have three games to dive into (again).

Last week, we focused on Grey Cup odds, so this is our first time looking at regular-season matchups to see if we can find an edge.

Remember, we don’t pick every game in this space — just the ones we feel most confident about. For picks of each game, check back to 3DownNation on Thursday morning.

Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Winnipeg Blue Bombers — Thursday, June 11 at 8:30 p.m. EDT

These teams were on opposite ends of close results last week as the Tabbies lost in overtime to Montreal and the Blue Bombers beat Calgary with a walk-off field goal.

The key matchup in this game is going to be Hamilton’s run defence against Brady Oliveira. Wynton McManis will be out for another week dealing with a knee injury, leaving the Tiger-Cats without a key piece of their run defence once again.

Now, they didn’t get gashed on the ground without him last week, but that wasn’t necessarily because they defended the run well — they just didn’t have to do it often. Shomari Lawrence only carried the ball eight times for 63 yards for the Alouettes in their overtime thriller.

Nothing in the CFL is certain, but I feel pretty confident Oliveira will get the rock more than eight times coming off a 113-yard performance in Calgary last week. The Winnipeg native lit up Hamilton for 107 rushing yards per game in 2025, and should have some extra jump in the team’s home-opener.

The home crowd might be the biggest edge that the Bombers have. Seven of Winnipeg’s 10 wins last year were at Princess Auto Stadium, and since the pandemic, they are 36-7 with home-field advantage.

Keep an eye out for Oliveira run props as we get closer to kickoff, but for now you can feel confident taking the home side in this matchup.

Pick: Winnipeg -2.5

Toronto Argonauts at Montreal Alouettes — Friday, June 12 at 7:00 p.m. EDT

Friday Night Football sees a clash of two teams who have represented the East Division in each of the last four Grey Cups, with Montreal opening their home schedule against Toronto.

This will be the regular-season return of Chad Kelly, who hasn’t played since the 2024 East Final. He will now go back to the stadium where he suffered the leg injury that cost him all of last season.

The Argonauts look quite a bit different from the squad Kelly last led 580 days ago. He will still have some familiar targets to work with, but shaking off the rust against a Noel Thorpe defence is no easy task.

Last weekend, Montreal kept Kenny Lawler bottled up for most of the game and forced Bo Levi Mitchell to be patient and work his way up the field with the short passing attack. The patient approach eventually paid off with Robert Kennedy III jumping an underneath route for a pick-six.

I could see the Alouettes going with a similar game plan against Kelly and waiting for a mistake to happen, then pouncing when the rust creeps into his game.

Offensively, the Alouettes weren’t their sharpest, and they still put up 30 points, and Davis Alexander still threw for 336 yards and a pair of touchdowns. With a week in the books to help them tighten things up and a loud home crowd behind them, I like the Alouettes this week, even with a bit of a wider spread.

Picks: Montreal -6.5, Toronto Team Total UNDER 22.5

Peter Klein is a Saskatchewan-born, Calgary-based CFL analyst. He is a lifelong fan who has been covering the league across multiple platforms for the last 17 years.