Pigskin Preview Week 8: Rhinelander at Merrill

The last three weeks have not been good for the Rhinelander High School football team. The Hodags have been outscored 106-8 in that stretch and have gone from 4-0 to 4-3 and fighting for their playoff lives.

That said, the Hodags are hopeful they can get things turned around tomorrow afternoon when they face winless Merrill in the Bluejays’ traditional Saturday homecoming game. 

If nothing else, three straight losses to Antigo, Mosinee and Medford have taught the Hodags how to deal with adversity. 

“We’re full of fighters,” Hodag coach Aaron Kraemer said when asked what he has learned about his team during its recent three-game slide. “We have a bunch of kids that battle to the last breath. I noticed it, defensively, against Mosinee. It was hard offensively for us but we played a better offensive game last week. We were able to move the football a little bit better and we had the opportunity for big plays, but we were inches away, several times.”

While Rhinelander will have to win tomorrow and next Friday at home against Lakeland to guarantee a spot in the WIAA playoffs, the Hodags got a bit of good news this week. Statewide outlet WisSports.net projected that virtually all teams that finish with 3-4 conference records will get into the WIAA’s field of 228 playoff participants. That includes six GNC schools (Medford, Mosinee, Lakeland, Antigo, Hayward and Rhinelander) that it projects will have at least three conference wins by the end of next Friday night. 

While that potentially gives the Hodags a mulligan, Kraemer said he wants to leave as little to chance as possible.

“The last thing you want to do is play a rivalry game when the playoffs are on the line,” he said. “We want to get the first win out of the way, get ourselves in and then deal with Lakeland as what it is — homecoming and a rivalry.”

Kraemer also said the team’s focus at this point cannot be on getting into the postseason, or next week’s Axe Game battle against Lakeland. All eyes must be on a Bluejay team that, at 0-7 and already eliminated from postseason contention, will likely treat this as its playoff game.

“We have to focus on them,” Kraemer said. “We can’t let any other thing enter our mind — whether it’s the playoffs or next week and homecoming festivities, if we’ve got to go play on a Saturday or handling the trip or whatever, all those things have to go out of our mind and we have to play the best football game we’ve played in the last couple of weeks in order to beat this team.”

Here are five storylines going into Saturday’s game.

Injury report

Owen Kurtz (ankle) played in a limited role last Friday and is expected to see more action tomorrow on both sides of the ball. The Hodags are also hopeful that Payton Campbell (ankle) will have more of an impact on offense than he has in the last three weeks. 

“(Kurtz) played, I thought, pretty decent football on what he said was one leg,” Kraemer said of last week’s limited performance against Medford. “I’d love to see him with two legs, because he’s a heck of a football player and we’ve certainly missed him. I think we’ll have him closer to 100%. With Payton it’s about getting him going offensively. He’s been a big piece of the offense the last two years. We’ve got to get him going.”

The Hodags will likely be thinner up front, however. Both tight end Bo Stott (knee) and lineman Reid Schultz (undisclosed) left during the second half of last week’s loss and, as of Tuesday, were considered doubtful to play this afternoon.

“Those guys are two guys that do make our offense special. Reid, pulling at a guard position and Bo, our down-blocking tight end. We’re going to have to have guys step up this week,” Kraemer said. “We’re going to have to make sure we make this simple for the offensive line that they’re prepared and understand what they’re supposed to do during the week. That’s half the battle.”  

Still searching

In general, Rhinelander is still looking for the offensive spark it showed during the first three weeks of the season. 

The Hodags averaged 29.3 points and 296.0 yards per game in the first three weeks of the season and have averaged just 5.3 points and 124.3 yards per game since. 

Kraemer put emphasis on the offensive line sustaining blocks this week as to not led the second level of the defense limit what could be 10-plus-yard gains to five yards or fewer. He also said the team will need to rely on some of the few plays that have worked the last couple of weeks — screens and misdirections.

“We have to utilize misdirection a little more early on in the game. That slows teams down a lot more than the other things do,” he said. “Against Medford we used our tailback screens and our draws and our counters, and those were open. We had a fumble on a criss-cross counter that I thought might have probably gone for a touchdown. We had a couple of draws that we ran that worked very successfully and our screen game the last couple of weeks has been really, really good. It’s just utilizing those extra parts of the game to keep them off-balance and put us in plus situations and plus downs where we can run our base runs.”

    Rhinelander’s Zach Germain intercepts a two-point conversion attempt during the third quarter of a GNC football game against Medford at Mike Webster Stadium Friday, Sept. 29. The Hodags are hoping for a strong defensive performance tomorrow against a Merrill team that has scored only two touchdowns in seven games so far this season. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

Keep them contained

On the other side, the Hodags want to make sure a Merrill offense that has been bottled up pretty much all season is held in check. 

The Bluejays come in having scored only two touchdowns all season — one in a 13-7 loss at Crandon in Week 2 and the other two weeks ago when Ashland secured its lone win of the season 7-6 in Merrill. 

While the Bluejays have shown multiple different looks this year, they’ve relied on a trio of juniors — tailback Callum Wheeler, fullback Kaiden Henrich and quarterback Jacob Schmeltzer to carry much of the load on offense.

Another junior EJ Weix, has been Schmeltzer’s top target in the passing game, though Merrill has thrown seven interceptions on the season so far.

“They remind me a lot of us the last couple of years. They run a pro-style pistol and a little bit of shotgun here and there,” Kraemer said. “It’s about our guys getting to gaps, filling gaps and then hustling to the football and getting the ball down at the first attempt … We’re going to have to get them down with the first guy this week, limit their extra yards and force them into situations that they have to throw it. We feel like our athletes on the edge can get that job done.” 

Solid defense

While Merrill’s offense has struggled mightily this hear, its defense has done enough to keep the Bluejays in ball games. 

Merrill has allowed only 20.4 points per game in GNC play, which ranks fifth in the league. The Hodags hope they will be able to take advantage of a unit that came into last week last in the conference against the run, averaging 266.5 yards on the ground per game. 

Despite all of that, Kraemer recalls that Merrill held the No. 1 offense in the GNC, Medford, to its lowest point production of the year in a 12-0 loss back in Week 3.

“They’ve continued to play tough defense. They only gave up 12 points against Medford, and that’s saying something because Medford’s a very good offense,” Kraemer said. “That’s kind of their strength (going) against where we need to improve. We have to make sure we improve more than their defense can handle this week. That’s kind of the goal.”

Saturday in the Park (City)

Tomorrow’s game will be just the third time since 2010 that the Hodags have played on a Saturday. The last time came five years ago when Rhinelander lost on Merrill’s homecoming day, 21-7.

On one hand, Kraemer said the extra day has been helpful this week. Monday was a very light day of practice, with the work for the game beginning in earnest on Tuesday. On the other hand, having been on the sideline as an assistant when Rhinelander played in Merrill in 2018, Kraemer knows how the Bluejays get up for their homecoming game. Merrill has won five of its last six homecoming contests, with the last loss coming to Lakeland in 2019.

“There’s a lot of emotions in a homecoming game, a lot of people around at that 1:30 start time. They have the dance right afterwards. There’s a lot of emotion flying around in Merrill for that game,” he said. “We have to get up for that game and be ready and prepared at 1:30 so that we can start the game strong and put that seed of doubt in their mind and take it from there.”

Also of note, Saturday’s game will make the fourth time since 2006 that Rhinelander has played Merrill with a chance to earn playoff eligibility with a win. The Hodags are 1-2 in those games, with the lone win coming in 2012. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].