Photo by Brent Just/Getty Images
Being a loser is easy. Being the biggest loser ever… much tougher.
It’s been a bad year for the Edmonton Elks. Heck, it’s been a bad many years for the Elks. A once proud, perennial playoff contender and 2015 Grey Cup champions, the team has plummeted to earth and now owns the one of the worst records in North American sporting history.
The Elks lost at home 27-0 to the BC Lions on Saturday night, taking their home losing streak to an astonishing 21 games. The last time the Elks won at home was on October 12, 2019 — and there’s no sign of the team turning things around any time soon.
Edmonton’s new record has caused the CFL team to pass Major League Baseball in home-field futility. It broke a 70-year record owned by the St. Louis Browns, who went 0-20 in 1953 the year before the team moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles.
The team were left without answers as they fell to 0-21 in front of their home crowd. It seems nobody can explain why this team is so profoundly bad.
“It’s an oddity to me to not be able to play good football and, secondly, not to be able to play good football at home,” Elks head coach Chris Jones said. “That’s strange to me.”
The 14-time Grey Cup champions have routinely been one of the best teams in the league since entering the CFL in 1949, but the team collapsed to close out 2019, before the Covid pandemic cancelled the 2020 season. When the CFL returned the Elks were a shadow of their former selves and have since become the most hapless team in the league.
2021: 3-11 (last in the CFL)
2022: 4-14 (last in the CFL)
2023 (ongoing): 0-8 (last in the CFL)
It’s not just on-field performance that has been a problem for the Elks, but disastrous decision making off of it. In 2022 the team traded the No. 1 overall pick to the Montreal Alouettes so they could get the draft rights to Carter O’Donnell, an offensive guard who has been signed to the Colts since 2020, with no signs of him leaving the NFL. Then, in 2023 the team spurred all logic by selecting linebacker Michael Brodrique with the No. 2 pick, despite him being the 11th best player overall according to CFL scouting.
There’s seemingly no end in sight for the Elks’ incredibly bad streak, and now we wait to see how low they can go.
