The playoffs begin early in Noxon this year. Like, right here, right now in the west end of Sanders County.

With both 6-Man teams playoff-bound the following week, the 5-2 Noxon Red Devils will host the 6-1 Lincoln Lynx Friday night at Jenny Lampshire Memorial Field. The winner of this game will perhaps earn more favorable playoff position but Devil coach Lucas MacArthur isn’t too worried about that, he just wants his team to be the best possible team they can be, and the rest will follow.

“We are approaching this like every other game this year, like we are going to be playing the toughest team we will play all year this week and go from there,” he said. “We anticipate a dogfight, a tough game. We would like to keep our momentum going into the playoffs.”

The Devils warmed up for this week’s big test with Lincoln, the No. 6 ranked 6-Man team in Montana last week, with a 70-14 win over the Alberton Panthers in Alberton Friday. Meanwhile, Lincoln, for their part, blasted Heart Butte 82-0, also Friday.

MacArthur thinks he knows what his boys need to do to be successful against Lincoln. “We need to be aggressive, to play our game,” he said. “We want to keep playing strong on the defensive side and maybe try a few new things on offense.”

The Lynx are a rugged team, MacArthur said, that executes very well and play a physical brand of football. “We will have to match their physicality,” he said. “We will need to match their aggression with aggression of our own.”

It seemed like everything the Devils tried in Alberton worked pretty well.

“We got up early on them, 18-0 in the first three minutes,” MacArthur said, “and were able to get everyone in for lots of playing time. That was our game plan going in and it worked out pretty well.”

Cam Wengerd and Justice Kayser scored the first two touchdowns in Alberton and a safety scored by the defense followed a little later in those first three minutes.

MacArthur said it was difficult to keep stats but that Mason Ugalda-Narcia, Jared Mullet and brother Caleb Mullet all also scored touchdowns for the Red Devils after that. What he liked most about the game was the fact that everyone got a lot of playing time.

“We kept experienced guys in with the younger ones and rotated everyone in,” he said. "It was a valuable game for us in getting everybody some good reps in a live game situation.”

The Red Devils will begin playoff play for real beginning November 1.