Everything the Fernley Vaqueros do in their flexbone triple-option offense stems from being able to run the football.
If the comments by Damonte Ranch coach J.J. Milan to Fernley coach Anfernee Sloan after last Friday’s scrimmage at Bishop Manogue are any indication, the Vaqueros are ready to see how everything else falls into place.
Fernley opens the season at 7 p.m. Friday against Coral Academy of Science-Reno at Damonte Ranch.
To tune up for their opener, the Vaqueros scrimmaged against South Tahoe, Damonte Ranch and Bishop Manogue, the latter two being 5A squads with the kind of size up front that Fernley won’t see anywhere else this season.
“Coach Milan, he was like, holy crap, you guys can run the ball,” Sloan said. “Like, our guys were ready to play.”
Even with a sophomore quarterback, Elijah Devold, who was seeing his first extensive action in high school, the Vaqueros moved the ball well in their offensive series against the Mustangs until a fumble stopped their drive when the ball was punched out of a running back’s hands. The Vaqueros showed a similar ability to move the ball against Manogue.
“To be able to move the football against some good 5A schools is a big-time morale victory for us,” Sloan said. “And again, it kind of just shows where we're at with that starting crew that we’ve got.”
With the graduation of quarterback Bryce Dunagan-Stephens, running back Keeshawn Love and slotback Riley McCullar, the Vaqueros have mostly inexperienced players stepping in to handle the ball. But that transition is helped by the return of an experienced offensive line.
“I think we're pretty good up front,” Sloan said. “I’ve got five starting seniors up front, which is a big deal, and those guys need to go against something.”
That experience showed right away. Sloan said they had prepared to face Damonte Ranch’s 4-2-5 defense, but instead, the Mustangs came out in a 3-3 stack.
“I asked, ‘You guys know what to do?’” Sloan said. “(They said) ‘Yep, coach, we got it.’ And again, they just cruised on down the field.”
Sloan said he saw much the same thing defensively, where among the players the Vaqueros have to replace is the school’s all-time leading tackler, Joey Machado.
“They're gonna make mistakes, and the one thing that cleans that up is by playing fast,” Sloan said. “We got guys that are now replacing dudes like Joey Machado, who was a four-year senior, who could play blindfolded, because he's 3,000 snaps ahead of everybody else.”
While Dunagan-Stephens, Love and McCullar rarely came out of the game when the Vaqueros had the ball, Sloan said this year will be different. The Vaqueros had nine different players take snaps at slotback in Friday’s scrimmage, and Sloan said he will probably rotate as many as seven during games. Four different players saw action at running back, and although Devold is penciled in to start at quarterback, Brayden Haas and Jayden Scripilliti got chances to run the offense as well.
While he said this year’s team is deeper than any of his first four years as coach, Sloan said whether they rotate defensively the way he plans to on offense depends on what kind of offense they are playing against.
“That depends on what package we're in, if it's going to require us to have more athletic guys on the field versus guys that need to control the box,” he said. “That's just a different phase of the game that requires a little bit different game planning, essentially.”
Coral Academy, Fernley’s opponent this week, was 5-5 last year and 2-4 in the Northern 2A but expects to be a contender in that league this year. Sloan said he told his team expectations don’t change no matter what league an opponent is in.
“I told them this week, the expectation is to go in there and play hard and win, regardless of if we're five leagues bigger or five leagues lower,” Sloan said. “They’ve got human beings that are gonna put a football down, they're gonna play football. Let's just put it down and let's play it.”
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