Week 5 is over and we learned a lot. Well, mostly that the West continues to dominate the East…

Whew, it’s over. At least for the time being. The Western invasion of the Canadian Football League is now done until Labour Day. The East is rejoicing.

For the past three weeks, we’ve had crossover football and for the East, it has not been pretty. Only Toronto, with a last-minute drive and Winnipeg, with a last-few-seconds drive were able to beat their Western counterparts, once each, over the last three weeks. In total, the West beat the East in 10 out of 12 meetings – and blew out their Eastern opponents in eight of those 10 wins. 

Ultimately, it was a good thing for the Bombers. With last Thursday’s thrilling 32-28 win over Calgary, Winnipeg has a chance to move into a first-place tie with a win in Toronto this Friday. A 2-4 record may be weak, but who cares? This is the year that 8-10 or even 7-11 could easily win the east.

Meanwhile, Week 5 was sure fun. The West won another three of four to take the season record with their Eastern Conference rivals to 10-2 and that means that this Friday night, the 1-4 Winnipeg Blue Bombers will face the 2-3 Toronto Argonauts at Rogers Centre in Toronto and this one will say a lot about Eastern Conference football. If Winnipeg wins, they’ll be 2-4 and tied with the Argos and maybe even Hamilton and Montreal for first in the East. It's true, if Hamilton beats Montreal on Thursday night and Winnipeg beats Toronto on Friday, all four Eastern teams will be a dreadful 2-4.  

Week 6 in the CFL opens on Thursday night with a pair of games, 1-4 Hamilton is at 2-3 Montreal in the other battle of bad Eastern teams at 6 while B.C. plays at Edmonton at 9. Both games are on TSN.

But first, let's look back at Week 5 and see if we learned anything at all…

1. In the East, only the Montreal Alouettes, 36-34 losers in B.C. this past week, have scored more points than they've had scored against them. Montreal has 157 for to 134 against. Toronto is 121-154, Hamilton is 99-141 and Winnipeg, with the worst differential, is 114-158.

2. Ryan Dinwiddie did what he was asked on Thursday night — he won a game for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He completed 24 of 39 passes for 450 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions. His touchdown came with 12 seconds left when a defensive back named Brandon Browner fell asleep, forgot to look at the football and let rookie Romby Bryant catch a lame duck behind him. Well, not behind him actually. Sort of beside him. If Dinwiddie repeats his quacking (that's quacking, not cracking) performance on Friday night in Toronto, you will start to think that Kevin Glenn has been placed in the witness protection program. In fact, Glenn could be the next Troy Westwood — another veteran humiliated and then dumped by the Bomber coaching staff.

3. So here's the deal in Saskatchewan… Derian Durant gets hurt after going three-for-five for 29 yards and is repalced by Stephen Jyles. Jyles proceeds to play within himself, go 14-for-18 for 201 yards, one TD and one INT and the Riders win 28-22. Wes Cates carries 24 times (see that Doug Berry?) for 130 yards and two TDs and now the Roughriders are 5-0 and clearly the best team in the CFL. Who needs Kerry Joseph when you have the best GM in the CFL?

4. With Saskatchewan at 5-0, Edmonton, Calgary and B.C. are all tied for second at 3-2. Every team in the West has scored more points than they've had scored against them. Every team in the West has a winning record at home (unlike Hamilton's 0-3 mark at Ivor Wynne). I will make my prediction now. Only two teams from the East will make the playoffs. There will be a crossover playoff game this year and all four teams from the West will be in the post-season.

5. If you're a Winnipeg fan, remember the name Troy Kopp.