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With a highly regarded, veteran football team it would stand to reason that a preseason scrimmage isn’t much more than a dress rehearsal.

Any member of the Eastern Washington Eagles that believes that is in for a rude awakening.

The Eagles are going to have a short scrimmage this afternoon at 2:30 at Woodward Stadium and it won’t be to prance out the fourth-ranked I-AA football team.

“Yeah, we’ve got veteran returning starters but they need to play well and we need backups at every position,” head coach Paul Wulff said. “Right now if you look at it, they’re all penciled in starters. But we also realize some of these young players have an opportunity to push some of these starters and have an opportunity to beat out some of these guys that are returning starters.”

On paper it would appear that only a couple of starting positions are up for grabs, but obviously the coaches are not going to allow anyone to coast based on last season’s or any preseason accolades.

“This is a great opportunity if I’m a player on this football team that isn’t a starter,” Wulff said. “They’ve still got a week or two to continue to (push starters). There is competition in our minds. There are kids that are hurt and if they’re not practicing they’re not getting better. That allows some young kids to step up and get better.”

The scrimmage will be about 40 snaps, with starters facing backups and freshman going head-to-head.

“We do not plan on it being very long,” Wulff said. “We hit a lot and practiced hard the first nine days. We want to be as crisp as we can and if we feel the crispness is going to wane a little bit then we’ll stop.”

A second scrimmage is planned on Friday and then the Eagles will begin concentrating on the season opener at San Jose State on Sept. 3.