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Continuity is king in football. Especially for an Edmonton Eskimos club that has reached at least the divisional-final round in each of the last four seasons. At the same time, athletes have a best-before date and it’s usually better to have them on the front end the back. Here are a handful of players headed toward free agency on Feb. 13 that the Eskimos should keep off the market and under contract for the 2018 Canadian Football League season:

1) Adam Konar, WLB: 24 years old, 3 CFL seasons, 3 with Eskimos

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He was the first stop-gap plugged in place after the initial injury domino fell on a season that saw the Eskimos become the first CFL team in history to surpass the $1 million mark in injury salary. Free agent pickup Cory Greenwood didn’t last the second day of training camp before a knee injury ended his season, but not before the Eskimos had gone all-in on changing the ratio on defence, which required them to come up with a Canadian replacement at his WIL linebacker position. Enter Konar, 23 years old at the time, having paid his dues playing on Edmonton’s special teams for two years since being drafted in the third round (25th overall) out of Calgary. His first defensive start came on opening week in his hometown of Vancouver against the same B.C. Lions his dad, Kevin, played for. Adam led the way with a game-high seven tackles, adding two more on special teams while coming up with his first career sack. And he never looked back, finishing with 59 defensive tackles, one sack and two interceptions in 12 games, all the while helping fill the void when veteran middle linebacker and defensive captain J.C. Sherritt went down in that same game with a season-ending Achilles injury. The fact that Konar is Canadian only cements his status as a must-sign for the Eskimos. The big knock against him is he’s been prone to injury, though Konar was able to fight through much of last season.