MONTREAL — Football is a game where opportunities can appear or disappear in an instant and where things often come full circle.

And there’s no better example than the Gray Cup-bound Toronto Argonauts, who emerged from Saturday’s East Division final in Montreal with a 30-28 victory, setting up a matchup against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers next Sunday in Vancouver.

The Argos led 24-16 late in the third quarter when quarterback Chad Kelly flew away with the ball and was tackled by several Alouettes near the Montreal 20-yard line.

Kelly got up, but immediately returned to the ground. The players around him began to greet the coaches. Within minutes, the entire Argo team surrounded Kelly, who was taken off the field on a stretcher and transported to the Montreal General Hospital where he was scheduled to undergo surgery Saturday evening for a shin injury.

A player who waited three months to play quarterback for the Argos while suspended for off-field reasons lost his opportunity in the blink of an eye, at the most critical time of the season.

This is football, a game in which a player’s season or even career can change in a single play.

The other side of the coin is that opportunities arise in the same way. That was the case when backup quarterback Nick Arbuckle took over with the Argos’ season on the line and a quarter remaining.

Arbuckle met Toronto head coach Ryan Dinwiddie when he arrived in the CFL to join the Calgary Stampeders practice squad in the fall of 2016.

At the time, Dinwiddie was a young quarterback coach with the Stampeders, best remembered as the backup quarterback who had to start the 2007 Gray Cup game for Winnipeg, after starter Kevin Glenn was injured during the division final.

Arbuckle only played for Calgary in 2018, then shined in 2019 replacing injured Bo Levi Mitchell. After that season, the Ottawa Redblacks came calling and rewarded him with a contract to be their starter. Then COVID-19 happened and the 2020 season never happened.

Arbuckle was in Toronto the next year, but lost his starting job to McLeod Bethel-Thompson and was traded mid-season to Edmonton for the rights to Chad Kelly. (Yes, football loves irony.)

In 2022, another mid-season trade sent him from Edmonton to Ottawa, where he became a starter for the remainder of that season and the next.

And then, this past offseason… nothing. In April and May of this year, Arbuckle thought his CFL career might be over. Until – with Kelly suspended and out of training camp – Dinwiddie made a call to Argos general manager Pinball Clemons.

“I told (Clemons) we had to sign Nick Arbuckle,” Dinwiddie said after Sunday’s win. “I need him.”

Arbuckle played sparingly for Toronto and did not play at all following Kelly’s return in mid-August. Until Dinwiddie gave him the start for the Argos’ meaningless season finale in Edmonton two weeks ago.

That game, where he threw the ball 32 times for 378 yards, didn’t seem so meaningless on Sunday, considering the circumstances Arbuckle was thrown into in the East final.

After Montreal scored a touchdown on its first possession after Kelly left, Arbuckle pushed the Argos into range for a critical field goal. Then, after the Alouettes scored another touchdown, he bled the final two minutes of time to allow Toronto to win the game in a winning lineup.

In both cases, he made critical second shots against a Montreal defense that had done its job for most of the day against Kelly.

The biggest moment of Arbuckle’s career came six months after it seemed possible it would be over. He now finds himself as the starting quarterback in next Sunday’s Gray Cup game.

Some coincidences are immediately obvious.

Arbuckle having one Gray Cup start under his belt is remarkably similar to what Dinwiddie experienced in 2007 playing for Glenn. And so, no one will be able to understand what Arbuckle is up against better than his head coach.

“My relationship with Ryan is why I’m here,” Arbuckle said Sunday.

The odds will be against him next Sunday.

But here’s another coincidence to consider: in 2021, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers won the Gray Cup and only lost one significant game all season, in July against the Argonauts.

Arbuckle was the starting quarterback in that game and had one of the best days of his career, throwing for 310 yards and doing what no other quarterback did that season in an important game against the Bombers .

Given how we got here, no one should be surprised if this happens again.