Merced College football shows youth, promise in season-opening victory

Bob Casey will have plenty to address Monday.

His Merced College football team showed all the signs of a young unit playing its first game Saturday. The offense struggled to move the chains, going five plays or fewer on all seven of its drives in the opening half. The team turned over the ball late when trying to milk the clock and was penalized 12 times for 119 yards.

The scary thing is, the Blue Devils were in control throughout and cruised to a 50-17 victory over College of the Redwoods at Stadium ’76.

Merced’s special teams and defense excelled, combining to force five turnovers and score 16 points. The offense was opportunistic with short fields to help Merced open the season with a victory for the second straight year.

“There were definitely first-game issues that happened, “ Casey said. “We have plenty of things we need to clean up before San Jose next week. You always have to feel yourselves out a little bit in the first couple games. We took advantage of a few mistakes they made early, and our offense was opportunistic in the first half.

“We did a much better job moving the ball in the second half and were able to pull away. We got a lot of guys reps and kind of acclimated to college football. We definitely could have made things easier on ourselves, but guys made plays when they needed to and we got the win.”

Despite producing just one first down and 97 yards of offense, Merced (1-0) took a 16-3 halftime lead.

A botched snap on a Redwoods punt attempt handed the Blue Devils a safety and a 2-0 lead seven minutes into the game. Drew Trahan made it 9-0 a couple of minutes later when he found Nick Cook for a 35-yard touchdown pass.

A second poor punt snap handed Merced a short field just before the break, and Trahan threw a 24-yard jump ball to Nih-jer Jackson in the corner of the end zone on the next play to make it 16-0. After a slow start to his collegiate debut, Trahan finished 9 of 17 for 119 yards and three touchdowns and rushed for a score.

“It was good. At first I was a little shaky. There were some nerves there,” Trahan said. “After that, we got the ball rolling, nerves went away and it all went from there.

“We went into halftime and talked about aggression on the line, about running backs picking up blitzes and just bonding together and realizing we have to come out and fight. That’s what we did and it worked out.”

Jackson Watts signaled a big second half for the Blue Devils, opening the third quarter by taking the kickoff 81 yards for a touchdown to make it 23-3.

Redwoods (0-1) answered with Cherrard Cohen’s nine-yard scoring run on its ensuing possession, but Merced yanked the momentum right back with its most impressive drive of the day. The Blue Devils marched 68 yards on 10 plays, capped by Trahan’s nine-yard touchdown pass to David Johnson.

Trahan scored on a seven-yard run on Merced’s next possession to make it 36-9.

It was more than enough points for the Blue Devils’ defense, which got interceptions from Troy Lowe (eight tackles), Soane Vaochea (eight tackles) and Nathan Duran (26-yard interception return for a touchdown). Cristian Nava (seven tackles) forced and recovered a fumble, and Trevor Taufahema had two of Merced’s four sacks.

“I think we clogged the run well and forced them into a lot of tough passing situations,” Lowe said. “The offense did a good job of scoring off of their turnovers. I remember being on the other side of that last year and being forced to defend short fields. It takes a lot out of you when the offense cashes them in.

“The best part was we made a lot of mistakes and still won big. We go back to work and just clean some things up and we can be even better next week.”

This story was originally published September 3, 2016 at 7:56 PM with the headline "Merced College football shows youth, promise in season-opening victory."