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App State Set for Final Scrimmage Thursday, Focus To Turn To Tennessee

Photo by Dave Mayo / App State Athletics
Photo by Dave Mayo / App State Athletics

Fall camp ended with the start of classes on campus on Tuesday, but Appalachian State football head coach Scott Satterfield sees Thursday’s 50-play scrimmage as the official end of “camp mode.” The Mountaineers will scrimmage during their Thursday practice as the focus turns to the first 50 guys on the roster and the details, and less on the broad strokes.

App opens the season two weeks from about the end of practice on Thursday evening at Tennessee. Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. in Neyland Stadium on the SEC Network.

“Tomorrow is the two-week point from our opener and we always like to have a scrimmage in that time frame to start to put the finishing touches on camp,” Satterfield said following Wednesday’s practice. “We’ll have a few more practices to fine tune a few things, then we’ll start to focus on Tennessee on Monday.”

After 18 practices, the two-deep is in place for the most part, but a few spots are still undecided. Thursday is the last chance for coaches to see those guys make an impact at full speed and in game-like situations.

“There are always a few guys who will show up and do a few things to etch their way onto or up the two-deep,” Satterfield added. “But for the most part we know these guys pretty well.”

A few positions are still up for grabs. The Apps must replace their two leading receivers from a season ago. Junior Shaedon Meadors returns his 21 receptions and three touchdowns from 2015, but finding who will play alongside him is still up in the air. Satterfield doesn’t know which of his young, but talented wide outs will fill the two-deep just yet, but he does have plenty of options.

“We’ll look pretty hard at wide receivers,” Satterfield said. “We have about nine guys who can play. We’re still trying to find the seven who we’ll rotate in. Tomorrow’s scrimmage and the next few practices will decide who is going to see the most time.”

Offensive line is another position Satterfield is eyeing.

Senior Parker Collins is a returning All-Sun Belt selection, but graduating two all-conference performers and facing a schedule which includes Tennessee and Miami in the first three weeks will force a few inexperienced starters and some talented depth to grow up in a hurry.

“We’ve got some guys that have played there, but we don’t have the experience yet,” Satterfield added of his O-Line. “We’ve been fortunate to have a lot of depth (in the past), but we’re going to have to play some guys against a tough schedule starting out. We’ll learn a lot about them (tomorrow).”

The Mountaineers will practice on Saturday at noon and Sunday at 6 p.m. before taking Monday off to get on their game week schedule.