Alouettes record 9 turnovers to stun league-best Argonauts in CFL East final

Kabion Ento and the Montreal Alouettes defence turned Chad Kelly's first playoff start into a nightmare.

Ento and Marc-Antoine Dequoy returned interceptions for touchdowns as Montreal forced nine turnovers to stun the Toronto Argonauts 38-17 in the East Division final Saturday.

The nine turnovers — which resulted in 21 points — included four interceptions by Kelly, the East Division's outstanding player nominee. Montreal also stopped Kelly twice in short-yardage situations and recovered a Kelly fumble.

Four times Toronto turned the ball over on downs.

"If we have to win or lose a game, we understand we want it on us [defence]," Ento said. "Every time we step on the field we understand it's another opportunity to take the ball away.

"All we want to do is get the ball back for our offence."

Montreal did that well in the third quarter, intercepting Kelly three times. Ento returned the last one 22 yards for the TD at 9:13 to put Montreal ahead 24-3.

Kelly finished 21-of-36 passing for 246 yards and a TD with the four interceptions while rushing eight times for 62 yards. Although Toronto had more first downs (20-15) and net yards (385-197), Montreal won the turnover battle by a decided 9-1 margin.

"You can't the ball over as many times as we did on offence," Kelly said softly. "Obviously I made it a lot harder on the defence than it should have been.

Toronto's offence began smartly, driving to the Montreal seven-yard line. But Dequoy's 101-yard TD return at 3:03 of the first opened the scoring.

"One of the things I was trying to tell Chad going into this game was he didn't have to be a super hero" Toronto head coach Ryan Dinwiddie said. "Sometimes we've got to let plays die and unfortunately we had the two pick-sixes, that really changed the game.

"He [Kelly] is still a young quarterback. We feel like Chad is going to give us a chance to get back here next year the loss definitely doesn't fall on his shoulders."

Later in the third, the BMO Field gathering of 26,620 — the largest crowd for an Argos game since they moved there in 2016 — booed the offence off the field.

"No question it hurts more [after 16-win campaign]," Dinwiddie said. "After the season we had and we were playing in front of our crowd we're pretty embarrassed with the performance we gave to the city of Toronto.