Indoor football: Roughnecks lament missed chances

The disappointment and discouragement were clearly evident in Chris Williams' voice Tuesday.

Less than 24 hours removed from his team's heartbreaking 59-57 loss to the Louisiana Swashbucklers in the Intense Football League semifinals, the Odessa Roughnecks head coach still was searching for the silver lining in the 2008 season.

The Roughnecks finished at .500 (8-8) for the year, and becoming the first team to score 50 points this year on the Louisiana defense was little consolation for the Williams and the rest of the team.

"That was our game to win and we didn't get the job done," Williams said. "That's how the whole season went and it's disappointing because we had a better team than our record showed.

"We have a lot of work to do for next season and we'll get right to it."

The Roughnecks came into the season with high expectations, just like the other eight teams in the IFL, but Odessa's path was made much tougher with back-to-back losses in Alaska to open the season.

A last-second victory in Frisco in Week 3 finally righted the ship, but it was a roller-coaster effort from then on just to make the playoffs.

Personnel issues reared their head after the second loss and Williams was forced to make the first of several roster moves to try and strengthen the team. It would be a battle he would fight the entire season and one that running back De'Wayne Hogan acknowledged caused problems.

"There were a lot of guys in here that weren't playing for the team and it showed," Hogan said. "Coach Williams let us play and try to prove that we could do it and we proved that we couldn't and that's when he stepped in and said that everything would be done his way from now on.

"We all got on the same page after that."

Also, Williams brought in Haywood Hill and Woodrow Lowe to improve the defense and the team won its last two regular-season games and then defeated Frisco in the first round of the playoffs.

Williams knows it was no fluke.

"Coach Hill and Coach Lowe are two of the best defensive-minded coaches I've been around," Williams said. "Having both of them here to make sure that everyone was playing at 100 percent and knew exactly what was needed was a key for us late in the season."

Other keys for the Roughnecks as they prepare for the 2009 season, which will see them in a new league as the IFL merges with the UIF after this season, is to return many of the key players on both sides of the ball.

Offensively, quarterback Dennis Gile settled down at the end of the season and showed the promise Williams saw when he brought him in to lead the team. Wide receivers Don Robinson and Jimmy Conner, both teammates of Gile at Central Missouri State, provided solid targets all season and Conner was the league's preeminent return specialist.

Hogan again was solid running the ball and made even more of an impression on the defensive side of the ball at linebacker. Also on defense, linemen Rodney Allen, Ahmad Childress and Jerry Turner turned up the pressure over the final month of the season, with Hogan, Shomari Earls and Sam Griffin doing a solid job at linebacker and Michael Hinton emerging as a top defensive back.

"We've already started discussions with many of the players about next year," team president Tommy Benizio said. "This season obviously didn't end the way we wanted it to."