By Greg Bates
SPORTS EDITOR
SEYMOUR – Matt Molle was a fixture with the Seymour football program.
He was the Thunder head coach for 17 years, but after an uncustomary three straight losing seasons, Molle decided to step down after 2021.
New blood has been injected into a Seymour squad that has won just six games in those last three years.
Jason Bins steps in after coaching locally at Freedom, Xavier and Green Bay Preble. It’s his first head coaching job since 2011 with the Irish.
Bins knows transitioning into a program coming off a 1-8 season is tough. He wants Seymour to return to prominence after going to the playoffs in 14 of Molle’s 17 seasons.
“The first thing we started doing was building culture,” Bins said. “Matt is an amazing human being and I love taking the baton from him, but we emphasize it and our kids are probably so sick of talking about culture and how we design culture and how we live it. But that was the first thing we started doing. I think that stuff is starting to take, which is a good thing.”
“It doesn’t matter what offense and defense you run, if you’ve got guys that believe in each other and coaches and all that stuff, that’s important.”
Seymour’s offense averaged just 7.6 points per game a season ago. Bins is looking to put a shot in the arm of the offense, switching from a wing-T formation to a spread offense.
“We like to get wide, which is very different than Seymour football in the past,” Bins said. “I like the spread piece of it and making you defend all 53 yards of that field wide.”
Bins was told that Seymour ran the wing-T for the last 47 years.
“This has always been my kind of bread and butter,” Bins said. “I coached at Xavier under Dave Hinkens in the Matt Ferris days where we’re throwing the ball 70 times a game. That’s kind of where I cut my teeth, but I’ve been a run game guy, too. So being able to run out of the spread is kind of where we want to go. I think it’s hard to defend.”
Grant Schmidt, a converted wing back, will be the team’s starting quarterback.
“He’s doing a great job,” Bins said. “He’s a leader of our team, one of our captains. We’re kind of molding a quarterback out of a running back, which is a cool thing for me to do.
“There are no bad habits from him, because he hasn’t played quarterback since, I think he said sixth grade.”
At running back, Cole “Dutch” Tetzlaff will get the bulk of the carries. The 5-foot-8 bruiser ran for 101 yards and two touchdowns as a junior.
With the spread, it won’t be uncommon for Seymour to run three wideouts sets and four wides with twins or trips and a single receiver.
“The defense dictates which guy is going to have a game and which guy is going to support his brother and do all the little things and not get the glory for it,” Bins said.
Bins is relying on juniors Keanu Chinana and Riley Young as the top two targets. The Nos. 3 and 4 wide receivers will be junior Luke Banker and senior Spencer Krabbe.
“We’re a possession receiving team,” Bins said. “We’re going to catch and we talk about, ‘Four every play,’ and we’re happy with that. It’s the run game guy in me that goes, you just extend the run game out.”
Seymour’s offensive line returns a couple starters with Connor Seitz and Statten Uhlenbrauck. Joe Dey, Ethan Fielding and Elliot Maufort will round out the starting unit.
So used to just primarily working on running blocking, the linemen had to learn the different skills of pass blocking early on in practice.
“It was an interesting couple of first days, I will tell you that,” Bins joked. “I’ll never forget the first time we threw four verticals and they’re like, ‘Oh my, God. You can throw that?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ All the receivers ran downfield.”
Defensively, Seymour played better down the stretch last season, allowing 19.3 points per game in the last four contests.
Bins is hoping to carry over some momentum from late in the year.
“When I got the job, I met with the team just to kind of introduce myself,” Bins said. “I had two questions for them, I’m taking over for Matt in a historic program like this, I said we’ve got two questions we’ve got to answer: ‘What needs to change and what do we need to get better at? And what needs to stay?’ Number one was team meals were things that had to stay, which makes sense. Number two was keep the defense. Jason Setliff is our D-coordinator and he does a great job with it. There’s some tools there that we’re going to use. I think this defense compliments our offense so well. They’re going to get us the ball back on short fields and that kind of thing.”
The Thunder have four starters back on defense: safeties Schmidt, Tetzlaff and Parker McHugh as well as defensive lineman Statten Uhlenbrauck.
Seymour will bank on its three defensive backs to carry the load on the back end.
On the line, Uhlenbrauck will be joined by Fielding and Tommy Romanowski.
“Our D line can get after it, so I’m excited about that level for us,” Bins said. “It’s very senior-laden with some young guys coming in, too. We’ve had a lot of moving pieces there, trying to find the best fit. I think we found it (at the scrimmage).”
Seymour will be really young at linebacker. Bins said there’s a good shot that sophomore twins Wyatt and Mason Bunnell will earn starting roles.
“We refer to them as ‘The Squirrels,’” Bins said. “They mess up a lot of things in our offense when we’re running scout D, and they make us better every day.”
Since Seymour’s defense remained intact in the offseason, Bins believes that side of the ball will be farther along during the first games.
“That was a huge thing for us, too. One level of comfort, one we shock the system,” Bins said. “I expect our D to carry us a little bit for the first couple of games when we get into our groove.”
SEYMOUR’S REGULAR SEASON SCHEDULE
Aug. 19 vs. Fox Valley Lutheran
Aug. 26 @ Luxemburg-Casco
Sept. 2 vs. Wrightstown
Sept. 9 @ Freedom
Sept. 16 vs. Xavier
Sept. 23 @ New London
Sept. 30 vs. Winneconne
Oct. 7 vs. Waupaca
Oct. 14 @ Shawano
Note: All games begin at 7 p.m.