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They lost Mike Reilly, they lost Duke Williams, they lost J.C. Sherritt, they lost Derel Walker. But what the Edmonton Eskimos got was a win to open their 2019 Canadian Football League season.

And the new crew of replacements showed plenty of potential for the off-season overhaul that brought 27 new names to the 46-man active roster. It was far from a clean performance. In fact, it could be described as downright messy.

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But the new pieces emerging to fill the void left behind by the former fan favourites outweighed the bad. Yes, there will be obvious growing pains to come, but that was to be expected. In the meantime, here’s what we learned from Friday night’s 32-25 season-opening win over the Montreal Alouettes:

1. The good

The Eskimos put up 600 yards of net offence, as Trevor Harris made his green-and-gold debut with close to 450 yards and a 78-per-cent completion rate to go with three touchdowns and no interceptions on the way to a mightily impressive 136.9 pass-efficiency rating. It may not be the long-ball game fans are accustomed to seeing from a Jason Maas team, with the longest pass measuring 45 yards, but it all added up. Not to be outdone, running back C.J. Gable’s 154 rushing yards on 20 carries marked his 11th triple-digit performance on the ground and were just 11 yards shy of his career high, as he also added three catches for 29 yards and a touchdown. The balanced attack featured 41 passing plays and 28 rushing plays.