The Statesboro Blue Devils had a week to prepare for their non-region matchup against the Wayne County Yellow Jackets after a tough season-opener loss to Burke County.
    Statesboro (0-1)  will travel to Jesup and face a Yellow Jackets (1-1) team that defeated Appling County 33-9 last week.
    Head coach Steve Pennington said the team’s “off” week helped prepare his players for the task ahead.
    “Our players responded well this week, and as far as practice is concerned we changed up our format a little,” Pennington said before a Thursday afternoon practice. “We’re thinking long term. This is going to be a process.”
    Pennington said he worked some players on both sides of the ball this week to improve his team’s depth. If the Blue Devils are able to have a few players work both ways, it will help the team in the long term, he said.
    “We’re working players on both sides of the ball to increase our depth and look for the pieces of the puzzle that might create more chemisty down the road. This won’t be an immediate fix,” Pennington said. “We have to take it one day at a time and we have to plan for our region.”
    The Blue Devils don’t start their region schedule until Sept. 18 against South Effingham. SHS will also have another “off” week before the game.
    Against Burke County, the Blue Devils were able to break a big 84-yard run up the middle, thanks to the efforts of Mahlon Williams.
    Williams ran for 105 yards in the game.
    However, the run plays up the middle may be limited against Wayne County due to the size of the Yellow Jackets defensive front.
    Pennington said Wayne County’s defensive line weighs in at an average of 280 pounds.
    Despite the challenge, Williams said he trust his offensive line.
    “I feel like we can win this game because we’ve done a lot of planning and preparing for this team. We changed up our offense a little bit more and our defense is ready,” Williams said. “We can run around (Wayne County) until they get tired, then at the right time gash them up the middle.”
    Pennington said he wants to make sure the Yellow Jackets’ defense doesn’t make his team one-dimensional.
On offense, the Blue Devils may use more pre-snap motions to give SHS an advantage.
    “We’re not going to try and shy away from running inside. We have got to establish something with our inside running game. If we don’t, (Wayne County) can just put men on the outside and make us a one-dimensional team. That plays into their favor,” Pennington said. “We worked diligently on some new things in the new scheme and we’re excited to see how it’s going to work.”
    As far as Wayne County’s offense goes, Pennington said the Yellow Jackets like to run three styles of offense. Power, option and at least three to four deep passes per game.
    In a pre-practice speech Thursday, Pennington told his players Wayne County would throw deep even if the opposing team had Deion Sanders in the secondary.
    The Yellow Jackets and Blue Devils will face-off at 7:30 p.m. today.