After winning the varsity season opener for the first time in school history, the Rudder Rangers will look into a mirror Friday night.

The Rangers will see a version of themselves from last year when they match up against first-year program Leander Rouse at Bible Memorial Stadium.

The biggest difference between the two schools is that Rouse played a JV schedule last season with its freshmen and sophomores. The Raiders begin varsity play this season only lacking a senior class, while Rudder played two seasons without seniors.

Like Rudder last season, Rouse is stuck in a very tough district, featuring 2009 state champs Lake Travis, Division III area finalist Cedar Park and former Class 5A school Vista Ridge.

To combat a tough schedule, the Raiders will be taking to the air.

"They've got two big wide receivers that look like gazelles," Rudder head coach C.M. Pier said. "It's hard to tell how tall a guy is on film, but these two both look like they're at least 6-2 or 6-3.

"Rouse likes to spread the field out with them and throw the ball a lot. Out of ten plays for that offense, eight of them will probably be passes. They're really going to test our secondary."

The Ranger secondary looked up to the task last week against Taylor. Four of Rudder's top seven tacklers were defensive backs, led by Kody Burton with seven tackles. Austin Baron added five tackles and intercepted a pass.

Overall, Rudder held the Ducks to just 23 passing yards and 114 total yards of offense. While still impressive, Taylor's passing numbers were depressed slightly because the Ducks run a slot-T offense that features mostly running plays.

Rudder will try to blitz Rouse some and knock quarterback Tai Gadison out of his rhythm, but Pier stressed that his defenders needed to worry about playing sound football first and rushing the passer second.

"We've got to stick with our fundamentals on defense," Pier said. "They're going to throw the ball a lot, but they also do some tricky things with their running game that can hurt us if we're not sticking to our assignments."

A punishing Rudder ground game will meet a defensive front that's a little easier to run against than Taylor's split look. Rouse runs a traditional 4-3 defense, with seven men in the box on most plays.

Pier liked the job his offense did against the Ducks but cautioned against overconfidence, since the 4-3 is such a flexible look. On one play, the linebackers can be deeper to cover crossing routes and the next they can crowd the line of scrimmage to stop the run.

"They've got a pair of pretty big defensive tackles in the middle," Pier said. "They've got a good secondary, too. It's going to be tough to run the ball on them, so we're really going to have to get after it."