Coach Tyson Moore said he found a lot to like from his Seymour football team during Friday night’s scrimmage against Silver Creek at Bulleit Stadium.

“I was really pleased with how we ran the football,” he said. “Our biggest question coming into the scrimmage, and really coming into this season was what our offensive line was going to look like because we lost five starters.

“We’ve got a lot of young cats that are trying to fill those pieces, so the biggest thing is what is our offensive line going to look like, and are we going to be able to pass-protect, and are we going to be able to run the football?

“I thought we did a tremendous job of both tonight, so I was very pleased with that.

“Obviously, there are always things you are going to look at to continue to improve on. The good thing is it is week zero. We’ve got a long season, and we’ve got a long time to really continue to work on those things.”

Mikey Wright will replace Brett Perry as the Owls’ starting quarterback, and Moore said he liked what he saw from the 6-foot-4 senior.

“He had some good balls, and our receivers made some nice plays. Mikey made good reads down there (at the 10-yard line). There were a couple called run plays that he saw something he liked and pulled and threw the ball, and that’s what we ask him to do.

“Every year we’ve had quarterbacks we can trust so we give them the opportunity. ‘If you see something you’ve been coached on, even when we’re down on the goal line, pull that ball and throw it out there. If it’s a quick touchdown, it’s a quick touchdown.

‘Otherwise, hand that ball off and we’ll score on the ground.”

One of those running backs Moore was praising was Nick Wheeler.

“I want to get above 1,000 yards rushing,” Wheeler said. “I want us to get all the running backs even stronger, and hype each-other up and stuff like that, and I want to perfect certain skills I’m better at. I just like the energy that we all bring, especially the O line.

“At the beginning of the scrimmage we bought a lot of energy. I think everybody had some good runs. The O line was doing their job, the wide receivers were doing their part. It just takes everyone to make good plays like that.

“I feel like we executed properly and had a good mentality for our first scrimmage against a different team.”

The past couple years Nick had to share running the ball with his brother, Cam Wheeler, who graduated this spring.

Nick said, “There was different type of hype in this family and stuff. We like to talk and stuff like that. Now, I’m the older guy on this football team and I feel this is going to be a good year. I feel positive about it.

“I feel we’re going to execute every game. Today was just a good start to the season.”

Moore also liked the defense.

“I thought the defense looked stellar tonight. I think they were ready to go. Obviously, we returned a lot defensively, so defense was what we felt our strong suit was going to be this year, coming into the season.

“I thought they ran around and made some plays. They had a couple times that they had a couple missed tackles, missed reads, but we fixed those on the sidelines and looked even better on the next drive.”

Moore liked the aggressiveness of the defensive line.

“I think the defensive line played their butts off, and the guys behind them did a great job of filling and keeping coverage. Our defensive coordinator and our defensive staff have done a tremendous job this summer of really getting these guys ready to go and really grow, and the maturity we have at each one of those positions and the leadership has been great.

“So, I’m really pleased with our defense, and I’m excited to see how well they perform this year.”

Curtis Burke was hoping to start at defensive tackle last fall but suffered an elbow injury early in the season and missed the remainder of the games.

“We’re going into a 3-4 so I’m just head up on the center right now,” he said. “I have the double A gap. It’s hard because it’s my first year playing nose. It’s way different (than playing a 4-3.

“The offense is going to double-team me almost every play. I have to hit one of them, and then throw my butt at the other guy so he doesn’t get a chance to get on my shoulder pads. I’ve got to hold until I see where the play is going.

“It’s more my legs. I fire out into them, then I start using my body. I’m just hoping I can get some tackles because I’m more of ‘just stuff the center,’ so it’s hard for me to get tackles, but it’s possible.

“I want to have a good senior year, have some good film to send to college coaches, hope I can get an offer.”

Moore said, “I think tonight we built a nice foundation to start off with as we go into Greenwood (Friday night). The biggest thing after the scrimmage is seeing some things we like, seeing some things we don’t like. A lot of teams will experiment situationally.”

He said this week in practice the coaches will put together a game plan they think will be most effective against Greenwood.

“It fine tunes the things we’re really good at and get better at the things we’ve got to get better at, the things we didn’t do too well tonight, and I believe we will. It’s not going to be perfect next week, and people have got to understand that.

“Our hope is we look better next week than we did this week.”