Ready or not, young Blue Devils will tangle with nationally ranked Modesto

It’ll be baptism by fire for the Merced College football team as the Blue Devils travel to Modesto on Thursday to scrimmage Modesto Junior College.

The Pirates are the defending Valley Conference Champions and enter this season ranked No. 13 in the nation by College Football America 2017 Yearbook.

The Blue Devils are coming off a successful 8-3 season, which included a 14-13 win over Hartnell in the Stadium ’76 Bowl. However, MC head coach Bob Casey returns only five starters from last year’s team.

“This is the youngest team I’ve had,” Casey said. “Eighty-four percent of our guys are first-year players. With that comes inconsistencies and growing pains. That’s what we’re dealing with right now. We don’t have a lot of guys that have a lot of experience.”

The scrimmage is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. at Modesto Junior College.

Casey says a matchup against a high caliber team like MJC will serve as an eye-opener for his young guys. An opportunity to see how fast the game is played for the players fresh out of high school.

“It’s going to be a good test,” Casey said. “Last year they were one of the top four teams in Northern California. In our scrimmage against them last year I felt we were able to do some things against them even though they hit some big plays against us. We took our lumps against them.

“This will help us get ready for what we’re going to see. So far we’ve had young guys competing against other young guys. Hopefully we play with some confidence. It’ll be a chance to see how the game is played bigger and faster at this level.”

One returning starter for the Blue Devils is quarterback Frank Cocio. There are five other quarterbacks in camp competing for the No. 2 spot which makes every rep important.

One thing Casey likes about this group is their willingness to compete. With so few returning starters it means there are a lot of jobs up in the air, which creates competition in practice every day.

“They compete,” Casey said. “They are competing with each other just to get a shot to play. We don’t have a lot of spots locked up. We still have a week and a half before our first game and we’re going to use a lot of that time to figure out who are starters are going to be.”

Merced College will open the season at Redwoods in Eureka on Saturday, Sept. 2 at noon.

This story was originally published August 23, 2017 at 12:58 PM with the headline "Ready or not, young Blue Devils will tangle with nationally ranked Modesto."