HAMILTON — The scoreboard at Hamilton Stadium read 24-10 with less than a minute left in the third quarter, and the Montreal Alouettes had already lost three offensive starters to injury. Robert Kennedy III was just a 183-pound defensive back in his second CFL season. What followed made none of that context matter.
Kennedy stepped in front of a Bo Levi Mitchell pass intended for Myron Mitchell at the 14:43 mark of the third quarter, tucked the ball and ran 54 yards untouched into the Hamilton end zone. A crowd that had spent three quarters filling Tim Hortons Field with noise went quiet. The Alouettes, who had looked incapable of winning, suddenly looked like themselves.
Montreal completed the comeback in overtime, winning 30-27 Thursday night in the opening game of the 2026 CFL regular season. Jose Maltos Diaz, who had forced overtime with a 29-yard field goal as time expired in regulation, drilled a 17-yarder on Montreal’s first overtime possession after Kennedy forced a fumble from Keric Wheatfall that ended Hamilton’s only chance to answer. The Alouettes had won again. Hamilton had lost to the same kicker, by a field goal, for the second time in seven months.
“I think that pick-six just changed the whole complexion of the game,” Montreal head coach Jason Maas told reporters afterward. “All of the momentum was with them and all of a sudden it was with us for a moment and we scratched and clawed to get it into overtime. And then in overtime, Robert makes a great play on the ball and Ento is there to knock it out.”
Davis Alexander finished 25 of 35 for 336 yards and two touchdowns, extending the CFL record for most consecutive wins to start a career at quarterback to 12-0. The record itself, though, means nothing to the 27-year-old Portland State product without the Grey Cup to go with it. Montreal lost the 112th championship to Saskatchewan 25-17 last November despite Alexander returning from a hamstring injury that had limited him to seven regular-season starts in 2025. That defeat, he said, is why the streak sits at zero in his own accounting.
“No, because we lost the Grey Cup,” Alexander said when asked if 12-0 felt significant. “Our defence was unbelievable. They’re a resilient group as you saw. They never gave in, never flinched.”
The game’s anatomy told a story of a team that cannot stop beating itself. Montreal committed 11 penalties for 118 yards in the first half alone, gifting Hamilton field position on nearly every other series. The Ticats needed all of it. Hamilton’s first score came after a 78-yard drive aided by three Montreal penalties, including a 48-yard pass interference call on Lorenzo Burns. Hamilton quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell was sharp and efficient all night, finishing 34 of 39 for 307 yards, but his one interception — the one Kennedy returned for a touchdown — was the only play that actually decided the game.
That context matters for a Hamilton team that cannot afford to read Thursday’s performance as a moral victory. The Tiger-Cats had not won a season opener since 2018 entering the night, and the pattern continued in ways the scoreline obscures. Hamilton held a 17-10 halftime lead after running back Ante Litre scored on a one-yard carry to end the second quarter, and extended the advantage to 24-10 early in the third on a Keric Wheatfall five-yard run. At that point, with Montreal announcing the exits of running back Travis Thies, receiver Cole Spieker and centre Justin Lawrence — three starters, one quarter — Hamilton controlled everything.
Then Kennedy caught the interception. Then Alexander hit Tyson Philpot on a back-shoulder pass for a six-yard touchdown at 2:50 of the fourth to tie the game at 24. Marc Liegghio’s 37-yard field goal at 6:39 of the fourth gave Hamilton a 27-24 lead and appeared to seal it. What followed was a 56-yard, 13-play drive with 13 seconds left on the clock, converting three third-down situations, ending with Maltos Diaz’s 29-yard kick through the uprights.
Hamilton head coach Scott Milanovich acknowledged after the final whistle that his team had its chance. “I felt like it was one that got away from us, quite honestly,” he said. “They won the turnover battle which leads to this outcome.” On Wheatfall’s overtime fumble, Milanovich was brief: “I assume he’ll never make that mistake again.”
Tyler Snead was the Alouettes’ best offensive player all night, catching nine passes for 163 yards and a touchdown. His 70-yard reception on second-and-20 in the second quarter — one of the game’s defining plays before Kennedy’s pick-six — set up a Maltos Diaz field goal that kept Montreal within reach at 10-10. That play, on second-and-20, from a team that had just been called for its sixth or seventh penalty, was the kind of situational football that separates teams that win close games from those that lose them.
Kennedy’s own background gave Thursday’s night an undertow the box score doesn’t capture. The defensive back spent two weeks on Hamilton’s practice roster in 2024 after being released by the NFL’s San Diego Chargers. He had returned from that experience changed, he acknowledged, having dealt privately with depression in the months following the NFL cut. “I was not myself at all,” he told TSN after the game. “They didn’t even see the best of me but today they clearly did.”
What Hamilton saw was a player at peace and at full capacity. What the CFL saw — in a season that opened with Montreal as the Grey Cup favourite — was that the Alouettes are, once again, exactly as dangerous as everyone expected. Whether they can stay healthy long enough to prove it in November is the only question the league’s first game left unanswered. Thursday marked the first of what promises to be a compelling professional football season in North America, with the NFL’s own schedule set to begin in September.
The Alouettes host the Toronto Argonauts at home on Friday, June 12, in Week 2. Hamilton travels to Winnipeg to face the Blue Bombers on Thursday, June 11, a matchup that will tell considerably more about the Tiger-Cats’ ability to turn the page. The NFL’s own 2026 season opener features the Seattle Seahawks in a rare midweek slot, underscoring just how crowded and consequential this autumn’s football calendar has become on both sides of the border.
