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One Fenton coach found Nick Mansour. A different one taught him how to be a quarterback. In a town that has spent nine months telling this story, the two men keep getting swapped.

There is a version of the Nick Mansour story that has been circulating around this county since roughly last October, and it goes like this: a hard-nosed old-school football coach looked at a skinny band kid and saw something nobody else did, took a chance on him, and changed the boy's life.

Jeff Setzke has heard that version. He has been asked to confirm it on a radio show, at a Rotary lunch, and by at least two people at his daughter's soccer game. He is a smart man and he knows what people want him to say.

Asked directly, on a Tuesday in August, standing in the doorway of a room that smells like wet nylon, he declined to say it.

"I didn't see something in him," Setzke said. "I want to be careful here, because it sounds worse than it is. I brought him in because he was free and he was smart and I needed somebody to break down opponent third downs, and a seventeen-year-old will do that for nothing. That's the truth. He was a really useful kid."

And the spring practice?

"He started throwing and it became obvious very fast that we had a problem." He caught the word. "An opportunity. But it felt like a problem for about three weeks, because I had a senior quarterback who'd done everything right."

So he is not the coach who changed the kid's life.

"I'm the coach who put him on the field," Setzke said. "That's a real thing. A lot of guys don't do that. Don't make it into more than it is."

The forty yards between them

At a Fenton practice you can locate both coaches without looking at their faces. Setzke is the one standing still, at midfield, with a laminated call sheet and a stopwatch, moving the whole operation forward in five-minute blocks. He talks in the imperative. When a period runs long, he says a number and everyone moves.

Paul Shaffer is the one crouching.

Sixty-one years old, twenty-three of them at Fenton, and he spends most of practice on one knee in front of a kid, explaining. On this particular Tuesday he spent four uninterrupted minutes with junior receiver Zach West on a single detail — where West's eyes should go on the release against a corner playing inside leverage — while eleven other people waited.

Setzke gave him three of those minutes and then said a number.

"He'd let me have twenty," Shaffer said afterward, laughing. "That's the job. Somebody's gotta run the clock or we'd be out here 'til nine."

What Shaffer actually did

Everyone in Fenton knows what Nick Mansour did last year: thirty-five touchdowns, no interceptions, a school record, an undefeated regular season that this program had no business having. Fewer people know what it looked like in August of 2025, when he had never played a down.

"He couldn't break a huddle," Shaffer said. "I've told people that and they think I'm being cute. I'm not being cute. He'd give the call and then just stand there, and eleven kids are looking at him, and finally somebody says 'you gotta say break, Nick.'"

Shaffer taught him the huddle. He taught him what to do with his hands on the sideline after a three-and-out, because Mansour's instinct was to immediately explain to everyone what had gone wrong, which is exactly the correct football analysis and exactly the wrong thing to do to a left guard who just got beat.

"He knew more football than me in April," Shaffer said. "I want to say that so it's on the record. In April of that spring that kid understood pass protection better than I did at thirty. What he didn't know was how to be a person in a huddle. That's not a knock on him. That's four years of experience everybody else got and he skipped."

"He knew more football than me in April. What he didn't know was how to be a person in a huddle." Paul Shaffer, Fenton offensive coordinator

Shaffer does not claim to have built the quarterback. Asked about the arm — the release, the way the ball comes out the same from four different arm slots — he shook his head.

"I can't teach that. Nobody taught him that. I've asked him where he got it and he says he doesn't know, and I believe him. He just picked up a football at sixteen and it was already in there."

The part where they disagree

They do not disagree about much. They disagree about how much rope the quarterback gets.

Last November, in the second-to-last regular season game, Mansour changed a protection at the line on his own — not one of the checks he had been given, a different one, a full slide the coaches had not called since week three. It worked. It sprung a fifty-eight yard completion.

Shaffer thought it was the best thing that happened all season.

Setzke did not.

"He was right," Setzke said. "Fine. He's right a lot. But if I've got a quarterback deciding to run a protection we haven't repped since September, and one guy on that line doesn't hear it, my quarterback gets his ribs broken and I lose the season over a fifty-eight yard gain."

He paused.

"He wasn't wrong. He was unauthorized. Those are two different words."

Shaffer, told what Setzke said, did the thing where he laughs before he disagrees with his head coach on the record.

"Jeff's right about the risk," he said. "Jeff's always right about the risk. I just think — you've got a kid who sees the whole field, and every time you tell him no, you're teaching him not to look. That's a cost too. It just doesn't show up on Friday. It shows up in three years."

Asked whether he expects Mansour to have more freedom at the line this fall than last, Shaffer said "yes" quickly. Asked the same question, Setzke said, "We'll see how it goes against Clio."

"Nobody's called"

The thing neither coach says the same way is what happens after this season.

Setzke was asked about Mansour's recruitment. His full answer: "Chase Lynch is going to play college football and we're helping him with that. Nick's got a good year in front of him. That takes care of itself or it doesn't and either way we've got nine games."

Shaffer, who said the same thing on the school's student broadcast last week and repeated it here, was less composed about it.

"Nobody's called," he said. "Twenty-three years. I have never had a player I wanted somebody to drive out here and watch this badly, and nobody's called, and I don't have any pull. I'm an OC at a Metro school. I can send an email like anybody else."

He said he has sent some. He would not say to whom, and he said it in a way that suggested the answer was embarrassing to him rather than confidential.

"The kid's out there emailing schools himself," Shaffer said. "Seventeen years old, writing his own letters. That's — " He stopped. "That's just how it is. That's not anybody's fault. That's just how it is."

Fenton opens Friday against Clio. Setzke, asked what a successful season looks like, said "beat Goodrich." Shaffer, asked the same, thought about it for a while and said, "I'd like him to have a bad night at some point and come back out for the next series."

They have been on the same staff for eleven years.

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Renata Kilbourne covers features and Genesee County schools for the Tri-County Times.