During huddles and in the locker room, Skyline football players and coaches must have been busting their guts while losing four games in a row to end the regular season.
Everybody else, at the time, seemingly had written the 5-5 squad off. Outsiders asked what was wrong with the vaunted Eagles, historians searched far back in the annals to find out when such an un-Skyline-like season had last occurred there, and some suggested top talent was drifting off elsewhere.
Apparently, Skyline was just setting everybody up. The high-flying Eagles are all smiles now — especially after a 33-3 rout of West Jordan in the 5A semifinals Friday at Rice-Eccles Stadium. The joke, it would seem after three impressive postseason victories, was on the rest of Class 5A.
Of course, whether Skyline will be the last team laughing will be determined next Friday at 1:30 p.m. when the Eagles take on Brighton on the Utes' turf in a tantalizing championship game.
By walloping semifinal first-timer West Jordan, which shot itself in the cleats early on and never recovered, Skyline advanced to the state finals for the 10th time in 11 years. The Eagles will be gunning for their first title since 1999, although they'll have to beat a team that's already downed them once this year.
By the looks of it, Skyline's not exactly the same team the Bengals saw a month ago, though. Skyline coach Roger DuPaix jokingly referred to his squad's turnaround as going from "the outhouse to the penthouse."
"I'm just real proud of our kids," he said. "They had their backs against the wall. But they worked really hard. . . . They got focused."
"It's a complete opposite. It's amazing," said Skyline quarterback Matt Marshall, adding that his team actually cherished playing the part of the underdog for a change. "Nobody expected us to do it. We have one more game to shock everyone."
They put a little shock and awe-shucks inside the Jaguars' helmets early on in this one. West Jordan had a lengthy, good-looking drive going on its first possession, marching the ball down to Skyline's 12-yard line. But that's when disaster struck.
On first and 10, quarterback Ryan Wilson didn't see his wide-open receiver in the end zone but instead forced a pass that Skyline linebacker Taylor Sedillo intercepted on the 5.
From there, the game went downhill quicker than an Olympic skier for the Jaguars. Two plays later, Marshall burst through a large hole on the left side and didn't stop until he was celebrating in the end zone 82 yards later.
"We got a key interception on the first drive, which really turned it around for us," DuPaix said. "(Marshall) got excellent blocks, and from there he took it to the house. That really gave us the momentum."
The score was only 7-0, but the gap seemed larger than that — and not too much longer it was. Marshall, who ran for 166 yards, scored the second of his three touchdowns in the second quarter, again off an interception by Ben Marlowe.
The Eagles turned it into a complete blowout in the third quarter when Kalama Molisi, Marshall and Toa Taeoali'i scored on consecutive possessions.
The offense put up Skyline-esque numbers — 292 yards rushing, five TDs and no turnovers — but the Eagles' defense made the biggest difference. The same was the case in playoff wins over ranked teams Lone Peak and Hunter, which only averaged 8.5 points against Skyline.
Compare that to the final four games of the season for Skyline, when the Eagles allowed 157 points in losses to Jordan, Brighton, Alta and Logan.
"They just got sick and tired of getting beaten," Marshall said of the defense. "They said, 'We're better than this,' and they showed it."
"We came together as a family and just decided we're going to do it," Sedillo said. "No one's goofing around at practice. It's all about business. We decided to come together as a team to uphold the Skyline tradition."
As a result, West Jordan only gained 233 yards and looked shellshocked after the first possession. Mike Meifu pounded his way to 107 yards rushing, but the Jaguars could only muster one field goal because of turnovers.
"That's an awful good team," West Jordan coach Mike Morgan said of Skyline. "They played harder than we did."
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