PADS ON – Decatur’s Corey Durdon hauls in a pass Friday morning in the Eagles first practice with pads on. Messenger photo by Joe Duty

After four days of shorts and T-shirts, the Decatur Eagles strapped on the pads Friday taking one step closer to the season opener.

Saturday night they will hold their annual intersquad scrimmage at Eagle Stadium.

Decatur head coach Kyle Story is excited to see how his team responds to full-speed action.

“Things have gone well on the field with shorts and T-shirts,” Story said. “It’s also gotten old after four days, and we are ready to put some pads on and play some real football.

“We want to see if we can execute what we’ve learned already once you get the pads on. Sometimes you have to go back and teach again.”

Besides execution, Story will be looking to build depth at every position.

“We want to see execution on both sides of the ball, and we won’t do much in the kicking game,” Story said about Saturday’s scrimmage. “We will look at everybody at every position, evaluating talent and seeing where each guy can fit.”

“Depth is an issue at the 3A level so we just have to make sure we have enough depth in case something happens to somebody.”

Saturday will be the debut of Grayson Muehlstein as the Eagles’ starting quarterback. He looks to continue getting comfortable with his receivers.

“I’ve just been working with the receivers as we get our timing down,” Muehlstein said. “We have a lot of new receivers stepping in so we just have to keep working.”

Players will be announced around 8 p.m. Saturday with the varsity starting around 8:15. The first-team offense and defense will each run 20 plays and another 15 or 20 plays on each side of the ball after that.