Last year: Vacaville beat Napa, 34-18. Vacaville went on to go 5-0, winning the MEL title. Napa was 4-1, finishing second. In 2009, Vacaville (5-0) was first and Napa (3-2) was third.

Vacaville in the rankings: The Bulldogs are No. 3 in the Sac-Joaquin Section Freeman rankings and No. 16 in the CalHiSports.com Northern California CIF Open Division Top 20.

Keys to the game: For Napa, it’s protecting the football, blocking and tackling, said coach Troy Mott. “There’s a lot of intangibles in there in regards to lining up correctly and the technique, whether you’re a DB, a lineman, a linebacker, offensive line, receiver. Whatever position you may be, there’s certain techniques that have to be done that are fundamental.”

MEL opener: Napa has had two weeks to prepare for its league opener and figure out what went wrong in a 40-35 loss to Antioch in the final nonleague game. “That’s the game that is in front of us, so that’s what we’re focused on,” Mott said of Vacaville.

Passing game: Zack Sims threw for 304 yards and three touchdowns in Napa’s loss to Antioch. But as good as Napa looked throwing the ball, the Indians can do better, said Mott.

“It’s an area of the game that kept us in the game against Antioch. It’s nice to see us execute that part of the game. With that being said, we did fail in a few areas in the passing game. It gets back to fundamentals. Sometimes we didn’t line up the way we should have. The routes a couple times were a little shabby. The big negative, obviously, was we had some dropped passes. We want to catch them all. We want to line up correctly every time, run our good routes and get ourselves open every time, not three-quarters of the time, not half the time.”