Will Dru Brown have the chance to serve up some crow to the Ottawa Redblacks on Sunday?

While Zach Collaros was back in full gear for the Blue Bombers at practice this week, head coach Mike O'Shea could decide to give his starting quarterback a little more time to heal

Plagued by tremendous struggles on both sides of the ball, the winless Ottawa Redblacks will now be without their best player for an indefinite period. Middle linebacker Nyles Morgan, who leads the CFL with 38 defensive tackles, suffered a broken hand in last Thursday’s loss to the Edmonton Elks and will be sidelined for “a few weeks,” head coach Ryan Dinwiddie estimated on Wednesday. “He wants to play, put a club on it, but we’ll let the doctor make the final choice on that,” Dinwiddie said following the team’s first practice since a 40-17 pounding at Commonwealth Stadium sunk the Redblacks to 0-5. Also expected to be missing “for a bit” from the ninth-ranked Redblacks defence will be lineman Habakkuk Baldonado, who recorded his first sack of the season last week, and starting cornerback Adrian Frye.

“Next man up,” said Dinwiddie. “The injuries are tough, but we’ll give some other guys some opportunities.” Expected to start for Morgan at the “Mike” spot against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Sunday is Aaron Casey, who had 27 tackles and six sacks in 15 games for Dinwiddie’s Toronto Argos last season.

Morgan broke his hand early in the Elks game but still went on to lead the Redblacks with seven tackles while also recording a sack. “You won’t replace some of the things that he has in his skill set,” said Dinwiddie. “I thought he played well last week.

He flew around. The injury happened in the first quarter, so he fought through that. You can’t question his toughness.

I know he wasn’t picked as a captain, but he’s kind of taken on a leadership role for that defence.” How the Redblacks fare without Morgan is merely the sidebar to what could be a juicy main storyline when the Redblacks host the Blue Bombers in the last game before their second bye — and the back-to-back meetings with CFL powerhouses Montreal Alouettes and Saskatchewan Roughriders that immediately follow it. Will Dinwiddie dine on crow Sunday night?

Perhaps it won’t even be on the menu. But while Zach Collaros (neck) was back in full gear when the Blue Bombers began their practice week, head coach Mike O’Shea could decide to give his starting quarterback a little more time to heal and allow Dru Brown the chance to face his old team at TD Place. Brown, who lost his No. 1 job with the Redblacks to Jake Maier before taking a pre-season snap, threw for 339 yards and a touchdown while making his 2026 debut as a replacement for Collaros in last week’s

30- 21 win over the Argos. Dinwiddie knows his QB decision will be heavily scrutinized this week, especially after Maier threw four interceptions in Edmonton while his career won-loss record dropped to 19-32. “I think any game, he’s going to want to play well, but especially this game,” Dinwiddie understated when asked if he thought Brown would try to shove the decision down his throat.

“He’s probably got an axe to grind with it. But that’s not in our control. Defensively, whoever is in there, Zach or Dru, we’ve got to have a good performance.

“We wanted to keep Dru around, and it didn’t work out,” Dinwiddie said. “So he got a chance to go to Winnipeg, and we got McLeod (Bethel-Thompson) in here , the veteran backup guy. But we still believe in Jake.”

Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, Brown will be brimming with added motivation should he get the opportunity to avenge his demotion in Ottawa. “Dru is a competitor, like each and every one of us,” said Redblacks left tackle Dino Boyd, who was in charge of protecting Brown’s backside for two seasons. “I think it’s just another game for him.

It’s another game for us. I’m excited to see him. I’m excited for this game, for sure.”

Will Dinwiddie continue to stick with Maier? While the coach’s focus is “on the guys in this building”, his eyes have to water when he looks at the league stats. The Redblacks rank at or near the bottom in many offensive categories, while their average points per game (23.8) is tied with Winnipeg for last in the league.

Maier has completed 66.8 per cent of his passes (123 of 184) for 1,372 yards (an average of 274.4 per game) and has thrown just seven touchdown passes to go along with seven picks. “We’re going with Jake again this week,” said Dinwiddie. “If we feel like there’s a quarterback change that needs to be made to give us a spark, we’ll obviously look into that.

I’m not going to put the pressure on Jake and say he’s got a short leash, but if I feel like McLeod’s going to give us the opportunity to win the football game, we’ll do that. “Obviously, the four interceptions (in Edmonton) are not what we wanted,” added Dinwiddie. “A few of them were pushing the ball down the field with almost ‘hope’ throws later in the game.

We’ve got to find ways to play better football at the quarterback position. But again, we’ve got to stay out of second and long. I mean, we’re asking him to make all these throws in tight windows in second and forever.

“We’ve got to get the run game going. The last few days off, we revisited some of the stuff that Greg Bell was good at at Hamilton. So we’re going to look at trying some different run schemes.

Try to go outside zone. That’s what he’s really good at, and we haven’t been able to get that going. So we’ll look at some different run schemes.”

Is the O-line to blame for the Redblacks’ offensive deficiencies? They’ve rushed the ball for a league-low total of 286 yards (57.2 per game) while Bell, an all-star with Hamilton last season, is averaging 3.7 yards per carry on 36 attempts. They also predictably throw to their slots, as veteran wideout Geno Lewis (13 catches, 25 targets) and Kalil Pimpleton (10 catches, 15 targets) seem to be doing a lot of running up the field for nothing.

Ottawa has allowed the fifth-fewest sacks (nine), but are the holes being opened for Bell and enough time being given to Maier to find Lewis and Pimpleton? “You need all 12 on offence, right?” said Dinwiddie, before addressing the O-Line question and singling out Giordano Vaccaro, a first overall pick who has been forced into a starting role at right guard. “I think Geno’s had some growing pains, as any rookie would.

We know he’s going to be a great player. Is he there yet? No, he’s a rookie.

So we’re going to have some growing pains there. But you know, we got to do a better job knocking guys off the ball. There are some opportunities to have some some big runs, and you know, we at least have got to get positive yardage.

We can’t we can’t be stuck in second and long. “We’ve had some shots for (Lewis). We had the double move last week.

We didn’t make a play on that 50-50, ball, and we’re going to have to get some more to him. I think Geno, that’s one of his skill sets, having a big catch radius and a big wingspan So, yeah, we’ll find ways to create some matches for him.”

Pimpleton, a true gamebreaker who is being underutilized as a receiver, was playing through an injury last week but still handled kick and punt return chores. “Sometimes the defence doesn’t give us those throws,” said Dinwiddie of the deep ball. “We try to put emphasis on it, and they give us something different.

We don’t have those deals, so we’ve got to go find other throws that the defence takes us to. There’s an emphasis on getting KP some more opportunities this week.” Related Why did the Ottawa Redblacks trade Dru Brown, their starting QB the last two seasons?

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