Gridiron.

Roughnecks · week 17 · 1998

Rhett Waddle is 38 and still doing it

Hal Vandergrift, veteran beat

Rhett Waddle QB
Roughnecks

Rhett Waddle is 38. He has played 263 professional games. He is averaging 16.0 a week and shows no sign of stopping, which is not how this usually goes. He reads Normal, which makes the mileage harder to explain, not easier. It ends for all of them. Not this year.

The ledger, after seventeen seasons: 35,972 yards, 563 scores. There was a 2,915-yard year in there. This is not it. Five clubs have had him.

Thirty-eight, and Sable, North Dakota before that. He would rather be almost anywhere else on a Tuesday. He was the younger brother of a player nobody in this league remembers. He fixed diesel engines with his uncle, once.

Roughnecks are 10-6 through seventeen weeks. Isaiah Ulmer is in year nine of it. He is out of contract after this.

He will not step on the painted logo at midfield, and always has.

This feature ran in the paper in week 17 of 1998. The rest of the season is there too.

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