They each at different points this season have had their local writers ask if they’re the worst offerings of a team they’ve ever put on a football field. One team is now on its worst losing streak in franchise history. The other has endured two historic blowout losses and lost one game on a rouge.

2019 has been a slow, unrelenting heartbreak for the Toronto Argonauts and the Ottawa REDBLACKS. It feels tragically perfect that the league’s two worst teams would meet twice in the final four weeks of the regular season. There are no playoffs in store for either team, just questions about what’s gone wrong, what change might come and regardless of who lost — the Argos won 39-9 on Saturday — how bad it can get.

But like anything in life, there was more going on that just what we saw on the surface on Saturday night. Both the Argos and the REDBLACKS are trying to win their remaining games while putting an eye to the future. Corey Chamblin let Dakota Prukop and Canadian QB Michael O’Connor into the game in the second half. Rick Campbell gave Will Arndt his third start at QB. Both teams’ depth charts are shifting to lesser-known names, allowing younger players to get live reps and to allow coaches, scouts, and GMs to make decisions.

Through difficult seasons full of darkness, both organizations are hoping that there’s growth, ideally realized in the spring, when enough time has passed and change has been made to have something new bloom. On the field and on the sidelines, players are taking stock of what went wrong and what a season like this one means for their futures.

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CAN’T LET GO

Brad Sinopoli has never had a year like this one. Through a nine-year career that started in Calgary and took him to Ottawa in 2014, the 31-year-old has seen far more Ws than Ls. He came into the league as a quarterback, having won the 2010 Hec Creighton trophy at the University of Ottawa. He shifted to receiver in 2015 and started stacking up 1,000-yard seasons. He won a Grey Cup with Calgary in 2014 and his second with Ottawa in 2016.

The league’s reigning Most Outstanding Canadian (he also won it in 2015) didn’t know defeat well until this year. It might have been the one thing that he wasn’t prepared for as a pro. This will be the first time in his career that he’ll miss the playoffs.

“It’s been challenging and it hasn’t been fun,” he said after the team arrived in Toronto on Friday. “That’s the tough thing. Especially in this business, you’re kind of always looking over the back of your shoulder. This isn’t the situation you want to be in. It’s been challenging.”

Losses have never sat well with Sinopoli. He agonizes over them, over what he did wrong or could have done better.

“Personally I’m always a very hard critic of myself,” he said. “Even last year with all the success we had, I would look at a lot of stuff and not be happy with how the game went.

“This year, I was very much like that. I really try to not get too flustered by a lot of stuff. I’m trying to learn how to be OK with mistakes because that’s how you learn. No one’s perfect and football is not a perfect game.”

Its sound theory that’s hard to practice.

“I hold onto things for a while. There’s still a game in high school that I haven’t gotten over,” he said.

It was the final game of his high school career. He took his Crestwood High team up against Frontenac.

“It was our east regional. It was just a couple small plays that I can remember that I felt like we should have won the game,” he said. “A couple throws I wish I had back. A couple of runs that…I’m thinking even right now I’m like, ‘I wish I stepped here and went outside.’ He catches himself, lost in a moment that’s taking on sepia colouring and laughs.

“It’s all good. It’s just hard to let go. But I think those are the things that keep you going.”

WHERE DO WE EAT?

It was about 30 hours before kickoff and A.J. Ouelette had a major concern.

He didn’t know where to go to eat.

The 24-year-old has only been with the team since he signed on Sept. 15. When he found out he’d be getting the start at running back, he immediately let his family know. They had arrived from Covington, Ohio and were settling in at the Marriott at the Rogers Centre on Friday when he started asking anyone in his vicinity about food options in downtown Toronto.

Ouellette did his eating on Saturday night. Playing in place of an injured James Wilder Jr., he took a six-yard pass from Dakota Prukop and shook off the Ottawa defence to get the first touchdown of his career. He finished with 11 carries for 69 yards and had 39 receiving yards in his debut.

“He’s a bruising running back,” Chamblin said of Ouellette. “His protection is good, that’s No. 1 and No. 2 when he runs the ball he’s efficient. That’s a positive in terms of finding some young guys that can do things for us.”

“I don’t look at the season. I try not to look at stats,” Ouellette said after the game. “I told some of the guys earlier in the day, they were excited for my first start. I told them, ‘You focus on your job and I’ll do my job and at the end of the day we should come out with a win.’”

With wins being a scarce commodity in the last two years, Ouellette was able to bring a rare feeling to a team that’s needed a lift this season.

“People haven’t got to feel this in a long time,” he said. “We won a couple of weeks ago but just to keep that (winning feeling) going, it’s pretty big for this locker room and hopefully this city.”

TRUST THE (HEALING) PROCESS

Before his team’s nine-game losing streak hit double digits, Rick Campbell sat in the lobby of the same hotel that Ouelette’s family was at and admitted that a season like this one is, in fact, a very difficult thing to go through.

“It’s been hard. It’s been really hard. It’s a lot of different emotions you go through throughout the whole year,” he said.

The REDBLACKS took their expected lumps in their expansion season in 2014. Their two-win campaign gave way to a success that shocked fans across the country. They lost in the Grey Cup in 2015. They won it a year later. After an East Semifinal loss to Saskatchewan in 2017, they were back in the Grey Cup last year.

Then came 2019. Trevor Harris, Greg Ellingson, William Powell, and SirVincent Rogers all left in free agency. Offensive coordinator Jaime Elizondo left for the XFL in April. Ottawa jumped out to a 2-0 start and plummeted after, going 1-13 since.

“I’m personally looking forward to the healing process,” Campbell continued. “We’ve built a really good foundation in Ottawa and we’re going to do a lot of self-evaluation and self-reflection. I am still a firm believer that there’s a lot of good players and coaches in Ottawa.

“There are definitely some things we need to correct but I think it’s targeted things that if we’re smart and make a few changes that all the sudden we can get right back in the mix.”

Maybe the best thing about the CFL is that it’s a bounceback league. The Argos won five games in 2016 and won the Grey Cup in 2017.

“Eleven months ago, we were playing in the Grey Cup game,” Campbell said. “It shows you how fast it can go one way and it also shows you how fast it can go the other way.”

The hardest part of the season, Campbell said, came a few weeks back when the Argos first visited TD Place on Sept. 7.

“We lost to Toronto in Ottawa, we lost to BC back-to-back and it was basically slipping away. That’s the height of the frustration and the anger,” he said. “Then, you’re kind of resigned to the position that you’re in as far as the 2019 season goes.

“The one thing I’m proud of with our players is they do show up and they do work. They’ve been that way in practice. That’s not the name of the game. The name of the game is winning but at the same time I’m hopeful for the future because we do have a lot of solid people that aren’t running for cover or pointing fingers.”

ADVERSITY REVEALS ALL

Talk to anyone on a losing team in any sport, any season and you’ll inevitably hear that adversity builds character, that it teaches. It can do those things, but it also reveals. It separates, and costs people jobs. It impacts futures.

“I don’t ever remember it being this tough,” Jonathan Jennings said at the team’s hotel on Friday. “In 2017 in BC, we had a rough year. I haven’t had a year like this. We’ve been on a big losing streak down the stretch and that’s been really hard. We started off 2-0, which was very promising. It seemed like we had the right stuff to get the job done but…it’s been tough coming down the homestretch.”

After four years in BC, Jennings signed a one-year deal with Ottawa and hoped to revitalize his career. He’s thrown passes in eight games this season. His QB sneak in the dying minutes of Saturday’s loss marked the first time he’d been on the field in almost a full month. Jennings threw for 5,226 yards with the Lions in 2016, but hasn’t gotten his game back to that level.

Largely watching from the sidelines as this season winds down, he’ll be a free agent once again this winter.

“It’s been a rough couple of years,” he said. “You just never know where you’re going to land or what’s going to happen.”

He looks at the success that Dane Evans has had in Hamilton this year, that Nick Arbuckle enjoyed in Calgary and hopes for something similar.

“I want to be in a good situation. I want to be playing quality football again, that’s the No. 1 goal,” he said. “It’s frustrating when things are how they were this year. Some of is not some of it wasn’t our fault. We lost our OC right before the season and that made things tough because you’re shifting people into positions out of sheer, ‘What do we do? We don’t have another option right now.’

“I’m looking forward to a good opportunity somewhere and want to be solidified and playing some good football.”

On Toronto’s side, James Franklin will go into free agency in a similar situation. Hailed as the league’s next great starting quarterback when he signed with the team in 2018, he wasn’t able to solidify the job with the Argos. While the organization was evaluating its quarterback talent on Saturday, playing McLeod Bethel-Thompson for a half and giving a quarter to Dakota Prukop and Michael O’Connor, Franklin was a healthy scratch for the second game in a row.

The Argos’ front office wasn’t spared by the adversity it’s gone through this season. Jim Popp lost his GM job on Oct. 8 and was replaced by Michael ‘Pinball’ Clemons.

Bethel-Thompson was asked after the win if everything he’d gone through this season — going from backup to starter and back again, now trying to lead and help the young quarterbacks — felt like five seasons in one.

“Five nightmares in one,” he said. “It’s been a wild season. There’s been so much hardship and so much adversity and so much losing, really. We win a couple games here and there and we’re in the playoff hunt right now and it’s a wholly different vibe.

“Winning and losing is a razor’s edge and we’ve been on the wrong side of that far too often. It’s been a hard season. Too much losing and as a quarterback, you have the onus. Your job is to win the game so that’s always going to fall in my head and I enjoy that. It’s been disappointing but also inspiring and motivating as well.”

FIXING THINGS UP

“I think I was technically an employee of the REDBLACKS before any of these players, that’s for sure,” Nate Behar said. “Even some of the coaches that were here when I was helping out with the scouting department in 2013 and helping RJ (Ottawa equipment manager RJ James) in the first two training camps as an equipment guy.”

Behar, now an Ottawa receiver, feels a unique attachment to the REDBLACKS franchise. He was playing for the Carleton Ravens when the CFL team was born and he immediately got involved in any way he could. When the Ravens’ season was starting, Brad Sinopoli would come to practice just to run routes. Behar would be chosen by Edmonton in the 2017 draft, but he always felt a connection to the city and its team. Like Jennings, he signed a one-year deal to come to Ottawa for 2019.

While his agent has to work out the details on his future, Behar would love to stay where he’s spent the bulk of his football life. He’d love to play a part in fixing things for this team and helping them dig out of the hole they fell in this year.

“It’s something that I do feel like it would mean a lot,” he said. “There’s always a business side to it of course but it’d be a great feeling to get to right the ship. I mean, (in university) I had to watch the fireworks go off all the time. I could see them from my bedroom window. So to get to set some more of those off would be pretty cool.”

They’re teammates now, but Behar still studies Sinopoli closely. The 25-year-old sees Sinopoli as a standard for excellence in this league and would love to emulate that as he hits the next stage of his career.

“I’m in his ear for everything,” he said. “We have a really good relationship in that sense. We really respect each other in terms of football IQ and Xs and Os. It’s pretty awesome to pick his brain.”

Three years into his career, Behar has only seen the playoffs once. That was as a rookie in Edmonton when the Esks went to the Western Final.

“I think I took it for granted a little bit because I got drafted by a team that was perennially there,” he said. “You have Mike Reilly on your team and you sort of assume that’s what’s always going to happen, so I didn’t really breathe it in too deep.

“That level of intensity…that emotion, that uptick in competition. That’s what we’re all here for. That gets a little addicting. You want that and you want to satisfy that itch.”

To bring that back to Ottawa would be the best of both worlds for him.

“I love the city. It’s the No. 1 reason I came back,” he said. “I love to be here. Everything about it means something to me.”

A SLIVER OF HOPE

As of Saturday night, Michael O’Connor had thrown all of nine passes in his CFL career. It’s enough to wonder what’s next for him.

The 23-year-old from Orleans, Ont. took the reins of the Argos’ offence with four seconds left in the third quarter. The ball looked it had helium in it as it arced over the field, landing in the hands of a backpedalling Armanti Edwards. On the fifth play of the drive, O’Connor had found Rodney Smith in the end zone with a deft 11-yard pass. The convert made it a 30-point game.

O’Connor finished 5 of 9 for 61 yards and a touchdown.

While O’Connor lobbed passes to his targets on the field, a reporter in the press box told a story of writing about O’Connor when he was a teenager, playing at Ashbury College in Ottawa.

He’s different, the reporter said. When you’re talking with him, you feel like he’s thinking about things on a deeper level. One of those people that probably got 90s on everything in school.

O’Connor is different but in a familiar way. His time around Ricky Ray in 2018 seems to have helped him. Watching him deal with reporters in the preseason and over the last two days, you can see a similar easygoing disposition.

“I think I’m a lot more calm on the field now than I was before,” O’Connor told the Vancouver Province’s Steve Ewen in August of 2018. He was leading the UBC Thunderbirds at that point and was freshly removed from his time in Argos’ training camp. He also got tutelage from Marc Trestman and Anthony Calvillo along with Ray in that camp.

“I’m trying to be more of a steady force. I’m trying to keep an even keel. That’s something I learned more about from Ricky Ray. When I was there, he was always the same every day.”

O’Connor will see more time on the field next week in the Argos’ season-finale in Hamilton. Chamblin wouldn’t say if he’d start.

“Mike, he’s a different type of kid and what I mean by that is he’s mature,” Chamblin said.

“The way he carries himself, he’s always good with the guys. I saw him coming back off of the field on one or two plays and he looked pretty good. He had a good look in his eye, like he was thinking about the play.”

The Argos’ locker room was almost empty by the time that O’Connor spoke with the media. Bethel-Thompson tried to critique the young QB’s media scrum, but O’Connor seemed unphased. He broke down his short time on the field on Saturday night, but it felt like he was talking bigger picture, for his team and himself.

“You live and you learn, you grow,” he said.