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SALT LAKE CITY — As a former "little punk California kid," Eric Weddle never dreamed he'd be where he is today.
Weddle was raised to work hard and to make something for himself — get a "great education and work hard for what you get," he said. Higher education was always in his future, but pairing it with football was never really a thought that crossed his mind at the time.
But Weddle got to be pretty good at sports and lettered in football, basketball and baseball at Alta Loma High in Alta Loma, California. He eventually accepted a scholarship to the University of Utah, where he started in 2003 as a freshman at cornerback in nine games and earned All-Mountain West Conference honors that first season.
He was later named a consensus All-American in 2006 and was a two-time Mountain West defensive player of the year — to say nothing of his time spent on offense at running back (44 carries for 203 yards and five touchdowns his senior season). Weddle was anything and everything for a Utah team breaking onto the college football scene as the original "BCS busters."
To then be drafted No. 37 overall in the second round of the NFL draft in 2007 and play for 14 seasons as a top safety for three different teams was just icing on the cake of his life.
"Never did I think I was gonna play college football, and never did I think I was gonna be fortunate enough to play in the NFL," Weddle said. "So for all this to happen, it's kind of like I'm still living a dream in a sense, and it just keeps getting better and better each day I wake up."
Eric Weddle is living the dream.
That dream became even more magical earlier this year when Weddle got a call to come out of retirement to help the Los Angeles Rams in their pursuit of a Super Bowl after safety Jordan Fuller was ruled out for the rest of the season during the playoffs. Weddle was reluctant at first but immediately went to work for the Rams — to the point where he started at safety in the Super Bowl.
When the Rams eventually won the Super Bowl over the Cincinnati Bengals, Weddle finally got his ring after more than a decade of trying. When he retired, he was consigned to the fact he'd never get that elusive ring. But his dream wasn't finished, and now he proudly wears the golf ball sized ring that is glittered with diamonds around an equal shiny Los Angeles Rams logo in the middle of the ring.
Eric Weddle brought something to the party … pic.twitter.com/ckgRe0FVBg
— Josh Furlong (@JFurKSL) September 10, 2022
"Oh my gosh, it's been a whirlwind, to say the least," Weddle told media ahead of Utah taking on Southern Utah on Sept. 10. "To go from being a dad and coaching your son to live in a crazy dream for six weeks and going back and playing in the NFL, which I thought that dream was done two years prior, to end up with a fairytale ending with a Super Bowl is just hard to comprehend.
"You never know when your opportunity's gonna arise, and are you ready for it, and are you willing to take it? Like so many times in life, people pass up an opportunity because they feel they're not ready. Well, when are you ever ready? So to take that leap of faith and go try to make the best of it, look what happened — I'm super fortunate."
His journey, one that landed Weddle a spot in the Utah Athletics Hall of Fame, is one such example of how hard work can pay off — maybe not to the level that Weddle experienced, but to an important level nonetheless. It's what he teaches the kids he's been entrusted to coach in Southern California, or the players at Utah when he returns to visit.
The reality, he contends, is few experience what he has, which has made Weddle "grateful" and "humbled" by all that's come his way. That's especially true since his shot at Utah almost didn't happen. With few scholarship offers, then-head coach Urban Meyer didn't see value in offering Weddle a spot on the team, Weddle said during the week leading up to the Super Bowl.
It was Kyle Whittingham who had a vision for the Southern California kid and pushed for the scholarship offer.
"Coach Meyer didn't really want to give me a scholarship at the time," Weddle said during media week of the Super Bowl. "Coach (Whittingham) went to bat for me and believed in me, and envisioned me as somewhere on the defense and had a plan for me."
That, mixed with Whittingham's leadership as a head coach, is why Weddle has complete trust in the program under the most winningest coach in program history.
"I think his consistency and I think his willingness to adapt — not just with coaching, the play, but just culturally, the players, dynamics, communication," Weddle said of Whittingham. "From where he was in 2005, his first year, to now is a huge change of coach Whitt. The fire, the intensity never wavers and doesn't change, but some things have and it shows.
"I try to take little bits and pieces of every coach and every man that I admire, and he's definitely at the top of the list as I think about how I want to be as a coach, and how I want to treat the young men, and how I want to inspire and to teach. I've learned a lot from him."
Weddle said it was Whittingham, and the Utah football program, that got him to where he is today and is largely responsible for his dream life.
"I can honestly say that that's how I learned to be where I'm at today from here," Weddle said. "And those experiences — how to deal with different teammates, different coaches, the negative aspect of the game, both outside and inside — you have to learn to cope with that and you have a great leader and man like coach Whitt, especially with all the coaches. I mean, it's easy to come out of this program better than you were — easily."
And though Weddle found great success at Utah, he believes there's more left for the Utes. The pinnacle, he said, is a national championship for Utah — "that is the standard."
"We're not here to just be good, we want to be great," he said. "We don't play for second place and any player or coach or administrator that thinks that way, then they need to be kicked out, because that's just not what we think."
It's lofty expectations for the football program, but so was getting Utah to the Pac-12, or making it to the Rose Bowl, or even playing a matchup against Florida in The Swamp as the favored team, Weddle said. But the program continues to grow and the best is yet to come, he believes.
"Just so much has happened that you just look and you smile and you're proud of that. We had a little hand in it, but these guys have really taken it to the next level and I see that," Weddle said. "It's just really, really special to be a part of this program and to try to represent it the right way. And now it's nice to have time to be able to come back and support them.
"We've been building and it's been a long process. It wasn't easy coming from the Mountain West to the Pac-10, or Pac-12, or is it the Pac-10? I don't really know. Yes, we've worked so hard to get to this standard of competing and winning championships. The next step is to finish it, and I think that's the driving force."
Weddle will continue to be an ardent supporter of the program where he now sits in the Hall of Fame, but in the meantime he's looking forward to his future as a high school football coach, where he gets to share the lessons he's learned at Utah and in the NFL, with hopes to see one of the kids he coaches to get a shot at a dream like he did.
Or at least prepare them for the more likely reality of making something for themselves outside the football field, where the same lessons apply.
"Every opportunity matters, and when something doesn't go right, move on, move on to the next play, the next snap, the next game, because you owe it to your players, and the players owe it to everybody else — to their teammates — that you meet each other halfway," Weddle said. "I try to tell my boys this all the time: I'm gonna give you everything I've got — schematically, motivation, teaching you — but you've got to meet me halfway; you've got to do your part.
"And if we do, great things will happen. And it's no different at the collegiate level. It's no different at the NFL — the highest level — if you meet each other halfway and do your part, special things can happen. I've experienced that firsthand."
