The cliché in the Canadian Football League is the teams playing the best down The Final Stretch always have the best chance come playoff time.

Well, over the last five years, only one team has had a losing record in their final third of the season and that was last year’s resting Saskatchewan Roughriders, who went 2-4 in the final six games of the season. But overall, they were 10-2 in their first third of the season with the league’s best defence.

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However, remember how close they were to not making the 112th Grey Cup? The BC Lions nearly bit them, until the Riders had a last-second, frantic drive to win the Western Final. The Lions were on a five-game winning streak heading into the playoffs last year.

Previous to that, the Argonauts in 2024 and 2022, as well as the Alouettes in 2023 and the Bombers in 2021, were among the best teams in the back half of the season.

And to add to that, four of the last five Grey Cup matchups have featured at least one team that played on Division Semi-Final weekend that upset the division winner the following week.

So here is a look at how this weekend's four teams are going into the playoffs.

WINNIPEG BLUE BOMBERS

Winnipeg finished the season with a 9-9 record.

The Final Stretch wasn’t a pretty set of games for the Bombers. To make the playoffs, they needed a second-half hero in Dru Brown........

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