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OGDEN — It’s not often that a game with 782 combined yards and 73 points is considered ugly. But in one man’s opinion, such was the nature of Saturday’s game script.
“Every year it seems like you have one or two of those,” Weber State head coach Jay Hill said following a 45-28 victory over Northern Colorado, who was playing in Ogden for its first time since 2014.
“The key to winning those if find a way to win em’. Find a way to overcome the adversity and I thought they did a great job of that.”
Among the game’s most adverse moments was the ejection of four players—two from each team—for targeting penalties, including Weber State’s Jonah Williams and Trey Hoskins. For the Wildcats, the calls came in the third and fourth quarters, with Hoskins and Williams appearing to make helmet-to-helmet contact as they tackled Northern Colorado’s Alex Wesley (six receptions, 137 yards, one touchdown) and Keaton Mott (17-33, 262 yards, three touchdowns, two interceptions, one fumble).
As a consequence, both players—along with Northern Colorado’s Nick Johnson and Sherand Boyd Jr.—will be forced to miss the first half of the team’s forthcoming games against Northern Arizona and North Dakota, per NCAA rules.
As is often the case with targeting penalties, the calls drew the ire of players and coaches alike.
“I hate targeting, I think it’s a dumb rule,” linebacker LeGrand Toia said afterward. “Football is a physical sport, you know it’s gonna be violent. Just don’t come across the middle if you don’t want to get hit hard. I just don’t think that’s a good call.
“I hate the ejection part,” added Hill. “These kids work way too hard to have to miss a game. But it’s the rule and we’ve got to live with it.”
Beyond the game’s 18 penalties, the teams combined for six turnovers and finished a dismal 9-of-28 on third down conversions.
But among the positives for Weber State, 3-1 overall and 2-0 in the Big Sky Conference, was an offense that improved upon last week’s 252 total yards of offense, and showed its big-play capability under first-year coordinator Dave Schramm.
On the night, Weber State finished with a season-high 410 yards, including a career-high 218 yards on 30 carries from running back Josh Davis, who also scored two touchdowns.
In the passing game, Jake Constantine completed 15-of-23 passes for 168 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions. Backup quarterback Kaden Jenks also threw a touchdown to Daryl Denby on his lone pass attempt, which put the Wildcats up 21-7 early in the second quarter.
“It’s hard because I don’t necessarily love a two-quarterback system, but they both have positives that make our offense better,” Hill said.
After Northern Colorado’s Keifer Glau made an early interception of Jake Constantine, Milo Hall’s 16-yard touchdown run gave the Bears a 7-0 lead before Rashid Shaheed (2 receptions, 63 yards) hauled in a 46-yard reception to tie the game with 9:48 in the first quarter.
Mott would fumble in scoring territory on the ensuing possession, which was recovered by Hoskins on the Weber State one-yard line. Three plays later, the Bears’ defense pinned its ears back and Davis ran—untouched—for a 95-yard touchdown, third-longest in Weber State history, to put the Wildcats up 14-7 with 5:53 left in first quarter.
“The hole opened up and then it was straight daylight from there,” Davis said of the play.
The Bears would not go lightly, however. As the second quarter progressed, Jon Boyer’s big-play offense scored 14 straight points on consecutive drives of 92 and 69 yards. On the former, Mott found Theron Verna for a 22-yard touchdown that was set up by a 37-yard pass to Wesley on the previous play. Wesley—who LeToia called “a playmaker”—would cap the ensuing drive with 42-yard touchdown of his own, and at end of the second frame, his 119 receiving yards had suddenly made it anybody’s game. The crowd—8668 attendees, in all—tensed.
Then, in dizzying succession, Weber State’s Rashid Shaheed went endzone-to-endzone on the second half’s opening kickoff and, less than three minutes later, Josh Davis scored his second touchdown to extend his team’s lead to 14, 35-21.
Michael McCauley’s one-yard touchdown reception brought the Bears to within 35-28 with 3:20 remaining in the third quarter. But in the final frame, Weber State closed the door as Trey Tuttle added a 31-yard field goal and Junior Latu caught a three-yard touchdown to bring the game to its final score.
Defensively, the Wildcats finished with four sacks and three quarterback hurries, and Jeremy Maxwell and Keilan Benjamin recorded interceptions in the third and fourth quarters, respectively. Jared Schiess also forced a fumble early in the first quarter.
Weber State will resume action in Flagstaff, against Northern Arizona (2-2) on October 6th, following next week’s bye. After that, they will return home to host Eastern Washington (3-1) on October 13th. Dillon Anderson is studying literary journalism as a student at the University of Utah. You can follow him on Twitter @dillondanderson.
