OGDEN -- The Weber State football season is over. Which begs the question: What kind of football team was it that played in Stewart Stadium in 1998?
Was it the team that started the season on a tear and ran its national I-AA ranking to ninth with a 5-0 start?Or were the Wildcats the mistake-prone bunch that lost five straight before salvaging the season with a narrow win over Eastern Washington?
Most likely it was a combination of the two.
The 'Cats might not have been quite as good as the 5-0 team -- they did barely beat Idaho State 6-3.
And WSU is certainly not as bad as the 0-5 team -- the Wildcats dominated Montana State in every way possible but lost when a bad snap wiped out WSU's chance to win on the final play of the game.
This year's version of the Wildcats was very much like the previous versions led by Dave Arslanian -- lots of potential, but just a little something away from being a really good football team.
"We didn't really get beat by anyone," said first-year coach Jerry Graybeal. "We beat ourselves."
Graybeal, while seemingly not giving his opponents much credit (though he did after each game), has a point. Weber State was a mistake waiting to happen throughout the last half of the season.
Quarterback Chris Wallace filled in for injured starter Steve Buck after the second game of the year, but he never really got the passing game going to the point opposing defenses were forced to concentrate less on the rushing attack of Morgan Welch. In fact, the junior from Beverly Hills took a lot of abuse from fans in Ogden over the skid the team took.
Yet, Graybeal wasn't ready to place the blame for the season on Wallace's shoulders. "You can look at that and ask what could have been," Graybeal said of the difference between Wallace and Buck. "But it takes a lot of guys making mistakes."
One thing is for certain. The Wildcats may have come up short of their team goals, namely a Big Sky championship and trip to the I-AA playoffs, but they set all sorts of individual high marks.
Welch came out of nowhere to establish himself as one of the top running backs in the country. The Canadian junior struggled in the middle portion of the schedule when defenses stacked the line and dared the Wildcats to throw, but he still ended up running for close to 1,500 yards.
He'll be back, and Graybeal hopes will have a healthy offensive line and more balanced passing game to make his senior campaign every bit as successful as this year.
Wallace will also be back but will likely have to battle for playing time with new quarterbacks. One rumor has BYU backup Drew Miller transferring to Weber State -- Graybeal knows the Miller family well.
Graybeal said the Wildcats lose a lot of significant players from this year's team. Chief among them is Scott Shields.
Shields wrapped up his final year at Weber in fine fashion. He was named Big Sky Conference defensive player and special-teams player of the week for his performance against Eastern Washington. He also became Weber State all-time leader in points scored, interceptions, field goals kicked and attempted, and a bunch of other categories statistics nuts love to look up.
"It's frustrating knowing we're going to sit home," Shields said of his four-year career of not going to the playoffs. "I think we're the best team in the league."
Shields and seven other starters will be missing from the defense next year. The offense loses just four starters.
"We've already identified what we need," Graybeal said. "We worked on that a couple of weeks ago and now the toughest part of our job starts. That's recruiting and finding good athletes that can come here and help us get to the next level."