After suffering through the “longest, probably most boring days” of the year early in the week, head coach Rob Phenicie and the Idaho State Bengals will finally get to take the field Wednesday at their first fall camp practice of 2019.

Idaho State starts practice at 7 p.m. at the ICCU Practice Field outside Holt Arena. Phenicie said not to expect the session to go much longer than 90 minutes, as the Bengals are just trying to get everyone back in the practice routine and get one of their NCAA-mandated no-pads practices out of the way.

Still, after a long offseason — ISU is one of the last Division I teams in the country to get its fall camp started — even that is cause for celebration.

“You have meetings, you have to get checked in, you have physicals for some guys, you have equipment fitting, you have a lot of policy and procedure that you have to go through,” Phenicie said. “There’s a lot of things that you have to get covered before you actually go out and practice. So, while you’re anticipating everything happening, it’s like, can we just get going?”

Wednesday’s session will officially begin the march toward an intriguing and important season for the Bengals.

In 2018, Phenicie’s second year at the helm, they finished 6-5 (5-3 in the Big Sky Conference), the team’s best record since an 8-4 year under Mike Kramer in 2014. The last time the Bengals hit six or more wins before that was all the way back in 2003.

While there’s optimism surrounding the progress the team made last year — and the 17 total starters it returns — there are also a few areas of concern that might affect their ability to maintain and build off that success.

The first is at quarterback, where Tanner Gueller departed after throwing for over 3,000 yards and 27 touchdowns against just 10 interceptions last year.

Senior Gunnar Amos and junior Matt Struck will compete to replace him in what will be by far the most-watched storyline of fall camp.

“You only get them for four years, so there was going to come a day when Tanner Gueller wasn’t going to be our quarterback,” Phenicie said. “So you have to prepare for that, and I think we have. There will be a different type of guy. Tanner was Tanner, and Gunnar and Matt are their own guys.”

Aside from that, the Bengals are looking at a daunting schedule that includes two FBS teams, Utah and BYU, and four FCS teams ranked in the preseason top 25 national rankings that came out Monday — No. 4 Eastern Washington, No. 8 Weber State, No. 18 Northern Iowa and No. 25 Montana.

“We’re staring down the gauntlet on the schedule,” Phenicie admitted. “(But,) it’s a fun one, the kids are all into it. They’re loving it, they’re fired up. They can’t wait to get going.”

They’ll have a chance to Wednesday evening. And, once the ball starts rolling, all the agonizing waiting of the past few days will be quickly forgotten.

“Once you get going, once you get going on the conveyor belt, we’ll start Wednesday night, then have our Thursday morning practice, and next thing you know, it’s going to be gameday,” Phenicie said. “It’s just the way it goes. All of a sudden, we’re just going to start practicing and it will be like, holy cow, we’ve gotta play.”