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Also departing were Aaron Grymes, Jake Ceresna, Justin Sorenson, Bryant Mitchell, Mercy Maston, Chris Edwards, Neil King, Nate Behar and Kevin Glenn.

As the 71st edition of the team heads to training camp, the question is if general manager Brock Sunderland reloaded or assembled a new set of deck chairs for the team that so unexpectedly turned into the Titanic last year?

While there’s are a lot of new faces in a lot of new places throughout the CFL this season, does anybody really have a read on what kind of team the Eskimos will be?

Sunderland doesn’t understand why everybody doesn’t necessarily see what he sees — that he’s built this team to go to Grey Cup 107 in Calgary to make up for not getting in the 106th edition last year in Edmonton.

“We have very high hopes. We’re exceptionally excited. There’s been no rock left unturned by this organization. We were very fortunate in free agency and I think we definitely have a better team going into training camp than we did last year,” he said.

While the Eskimos GM received effusive praise for the job he did on the unprecedented wild and crazy free agent frenzy day in CFL history, replacing Reilly and some of the other departed players, I’m not sure it carried all the way to training camp with some of the pre-season predictions that are out there.

It seemed an appropriate time to push his buttons.

To this point, it’s been the job of Sunderland to round ’em up. Starting Sunday, it’ll be the job of Jason Maas to coach ’em up. And Sunderland thinks he’s giving Maas a team that’s going to reach for the top.