Gonzaga College High School coach Randy Trivers received a heartfelt text at 5:58 p.m. on Nov. 19, 2018.
Ernie Acorsi – the former NFL general manager for the Colts, Browns and Giants – sent the message. Acorsi's son Michael worked with Trivers at Maryland in the 1990s, and it was one of the many Washington D.C. connections offering congratulations Trivers sifted through that day. Five years later, Trivers tries to hold it together while reading that text aloud.
"Randy, I can honestly say, in 70 years of watching football, I have never seen anything like this. It is the most remarkable finish I have ever seen. I bet you are so proud of your team. Michael and I are so proud of you. Enjoy every moment of this."
How could a high school football game elicit that reaction?
Caleb Williams is the best answer. Williams – then a sophomore at Gonzaga – became a D.C. superhero with a 53-yard Hail Mary pass to John Marshall that closed what is subjectively the wildest 39 seconds in high school football history. The Eagles beat the rival DeMatha Catholic Stags 46-43 in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference championship.
In those fateful 39 seconds, there were three lead changes, a third-and-33 conversion, a kickoff return for a touchdown and Williams' walk-off Hail Mary. This is the origin story for Williams – the No. 1-ranked recruit in the nation, the 2022 Heisman Trophy winner at USC and projected No. 1 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Marco Hardie – a former DeMatha assistant coach – spent that week sorting out strategies to contain Williams, and the Stags had good answers in the secondary in Nick Cross, DeMarco Hellams and Josh Wallace. Cross is now a second-year safety with the Indianapolis Colts, Hellams is a rookie safety with the Atlanta Falcons and Wallace is a senior cornerback at Michigan.
Still, Williams was a potential problem.
"From the first moment you saw him, you could see he had an elite-level arm," Hardie said. "You coach in the WCAC, you see Division I talents and a couple guys that may end up in the league. It was clear he had the best arm we'd ever seen. The second was his mobility – his legs. He could extend plays. He could break a run, a scramble, for 60 or 80 yards and take it to the house. The thing is – he could combine the two."
On a field that featured 28 players with a recruiting rating of three stars or more, Williams made the final impossible play that won the WCAC championship; the first of many that rendered everyone who saw it speechless. Williams hit 13 of 29 passes for 358 yards and three TDs. He added 20 carries for 113 yards and three TDs. He even added a nine-yard TD reception to account for all seven Gonzaga touchdowns.
That is how you earn the nickname "Superman."
"Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018, No. 18 Caleb Williams – who we just retired his jersey by the way," Trivers said. "The first jersey retired at Gonzaga in 100 years of football. That was his birthday. You can't make this up. You can't make it up to win the championship on a Hail Mary on his birthday. C'mon now."
That is all part of one of the greatest games ever played in the DMV.
*****
MarShawn Lloyd transferred to USC from South Carolina ahead of the 2023 season. He wanted the chance to play with Williams in college. Lloyd emerged as a star running back with Williams, who is expected to go to the Chicago Bears with the overall No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft. Lloyd, however, sees a reminder of Nov. 18, 2018, all the time from his quarterback.
"He wears his Gonzaga shorts all the time and I hate it," Lloyd said. "I hate every bit of it."
Lloyd was a four-star running back at DeMatha in 2018. He scored four TDs – including the game-winner in a 27-21 triple-overtime regular-season thriller between the teams on Oct. 13, 2018. Lloyd spent four hours a day commuting from Wilmington, Del., to Hyattsville, Md., just to play for the Stags. Now on the West Coast, he hears the best-of-the-best arguments for California high school powerhouses such as Mater Dei and St. John Bosco all the time. Yet, he will always represent the WCAC, especially the Gonzaga-DeMatha rivalry, along with Williams.
"There is a lot of pride and a lot of privilege with us being on the same team and being from the same area," Lloyd said. "It's big, especially with what we're doing right now. Our offense is ranked No. 1 in the country. It's cool having two guys from the WCAC doing their thing."
Former DeMatha coach Eli Brooks, now running backs coach at Virginia Tech, gave a matter-of-fact response when asked for the college football equivalent heading into that WCAC championship game.
"Ohio State-Michigan," Brooks said. "In that league, those are the only remaining all-boys schools left. It was standing room only. The stadium might be only 8,000, but it felt like there were 50,000 people in attendance."
The night before those stands at Catholic University's Cardinal Stadium filled up, there was the ultimate case of foreshadowing.
*****
John Marshall was born into WCAC football. He watched his brother Brendan throw to future Buffalo Bills receiver Stefon Diggs as part of a run at Good Counsel High School, which won four straight WCAC championships from 2009-12. Marshall played receiver at Gonzaga, and he was putting the finishing touch on his senior season before heading to Navy – where he would play safety and linebacker from 2019-22.
The Eagles worked out at Catholic University the night before the championship game on Nov. 17, 2018, and Marshall recalls the team period near the end of practice devoted to game-ending situations. Williams stepped up in the pocket, stepped back, stepped up and let one fly.
"I caught a Hail Mary in practice the day before our game," Marshall said. "We kind of had our spots. We lined up for that, the offense blocked well enough to allow him to step up into the pocket and he threw it the exact same way – at least on par if not better — than he did in the game."
This was the same end zone – almost the same spot – where Marshall would catch a Hail Mary the next night. In that moment, Trivers could not help but feel that something special might be in the works.
"That's where they say luck is when preparation meets opportunity," Trivers said. "Being a Jesuit Catholic school, maybe a little bit of God's will."
*****
Three D.C. friends took a gamble on the morning of Nov. 18, 2018, when they set up a broadcaster center behind the other end zone at Catholic University Stadium.
How would an outside-the-pressbox setup work if it rained? With temperatures in the 50s, it would have been easier to stay home and watch Houston play Washington in Week 11 of the NFL season instead. Yet Ken Meringolo, a Bishop McNamara grad, felt an obligation to try a new endeavor. He set up the tent.
"All of our friends went to these schools," Meringolo said. "We're around each other, and we're friends for life. The WCAC is tight like that. We just know our schools."
Meringolo was set on launching First Amendment Sports, a hyper-local sports company to cover the WCAC along with friends Tim Strachan, a DeMatha grad and former Maryland football color analyst; and Kevin Ricca, who played for his father John at St. John's Catholic Prep. The three friends had one dress rehearsal game the previous week, but this was the first full-go experience. They hired a film crew from Connecticut to provide multiple camera angles. They wanted the best possible coverage for Gonzaga-DeMatha.
"It was like the NFC East to us growing up around here," Ricca said. "Gonzaga-DeMatha took it to another level that night."
Yet those friends had no idea how this game would change their lives with a viral moment – and a signature call – that would make its way to SportsCenter that night.
"We talked about it for years since," Strachan said. "It being the best game I've ever seen with natural eyes."
*****
Eric Najarian – DeMatha's quarterback who is now an offensive assistant at Maryland – trained with Williams at the Quarterback Factory with coach Chris Baucia throughout high school. Williams might wear a Gonzaga shirt and Najarian would wear his DeMatha shirt, but there was never more than a simple back and forth before they went to work.
Najarian was a worthy antagonist to Williams on Nov. 18, 2018; especially in the first quarter. Lloyd opened the scoring with a 41-yard TD run. Najarian hit Jermaine Johnson for a touchdown pass on the next possession then Hellams for another TD with 10:48 left in the second quarter.
DeMatha 20, Gonzaga 0.
"Everything was kind of coming together," Najarian said. "We had MarShawn, who was so explosive. They had to take care of him. If you covered DeMarco or Jermaine 1-on-1, that was an issue. We were clicking."
Brooks was encouraged too, even if he knew this was going to be a four-quarter affair.
"We had so many great battles with Gonzaga over the years that even when we went up by 20, I continued to tell the team to stay focused," Brooks said. "They weren't going to go anywhere. They were going to make a run. They did, but it was a great game. Eric probably had the best game of his career, and it was overshadowed by Caleb's heroics."
On the other sideline, Trivers reverted to the word-of-the-week at practice: "Trust." Williams put that into action with the first of several comebacks. He led back-to-back touchdown drives, and the game escalated with each possession from there. Gonzaga scored on a "Philly Special" from Marshall to Williams with 2:45 left in the third quarter.
DeMatha 26, Gonzaga 21.
"When I talk about Caleb, one of his best qualities is his poise under pressure," Trivers said. "Of course, when you have an athlete like that and particularly at that position, it's contagious. It's inspiring to others.
"Often times, I would just imagine there is some type of emergency situation in life," he said. "You're on a boat and something is going wrong. There is somebody who can bring a sense of confidence to others. 'OK, I don't know how to sail this boat, but look who just showed up out of the water.' That is the kind of leader Caleb is."
The Stags, however, scored on a TD pass from Najarian to Hellams and added a field goal to retake a 36-21 lead with 7:47 remaining. No way Williams could lead another comeback, right? Williams answered with two more touchdown runs. Two defensive stops later, Gonzaga had the ball with 1:47 remaining.
DeMatha 36, Gonzaga 33.
Meringolo could not help but stare at the sidelines from under the First Amendment Sports broadcast tent. This had become the "Caleb Williams Show." The new three-man crew was at the center of the action. Meringolo saw Anthony McFarland, a former DeMatha running back who had rushed for 298 yards the previous day for Maryland in a 52-51 loss to Ohio State, engaged with every play.
"There were a handful of players like that, and it was watching them react," Meringolo said. "There is something that happens when you see their reactions. You got the sense that this was something even they hadn't seen before."
*****
An offensive pass interference on second-and-10 pushed Gonzaga back, and Williams took a sack on the next play. He stayed on the turf for a few seconds, and that could have meant the end for the Eagles.
"He comes up gimpy, they have no timeouts left," Ricca said. "If he comes out, he has to leave the field. You have to sit out a play by rule."
Williams suffered a broken foot on the play, and he faced a third-and-33. When Brooks hears "third-and-33," the accompanying groan suggests that down and distance might hurt forever. Williams hit Sam Sweeney on a deep fade route down the sideline for a 50-yard gain with 39 seconds remaining.
"That one – we really thought that we would end the game on that play," Brooks said. "Even if they got half on fourth down, third-and-33 is just it was, 'Oh my goodness.' We were all stunned. We were stunned."
On the next play, Williams appeared to hit the go-ahead TD to Dean Engram, but Engram was ruled out of bounds despite landing on the pylon. Williams simply threw the go-ahead touchdown on the next play to Sweeney to take the lead with 29 seconds remaining. The receiver was called for an unsportsmanlike penalty for spinning the football.
Gonzaga 40, DeMatha 36.
Both coaches were seething. Trivers did not like the penalty that pushed the kickoff back to the 20-yard-line, and Brooks was trying to figure out the right tone after surrendering the lead for the first time.
"When they went up – our sideline was in shock," Brooks said. "I was the special teams coordinator at the time, I told them, 'Guys this is the moment we have been waiting on.' You give them the whole speech to the guys, 'Hey, we're going to return it for a touchdown.' In this case, they believed it."
Dominic Logan-Nealy fielded the kickoff on the bounce. He followed Lloyd's block before breaking one last tackle and tight-roping into the end zone with 15 seconds left. Logan-Nealy ran to the student section by the track, and a mass celebration erupted before the extra point.
DeMatha 43, Gonzaga 40.
"I was the touchdown-leading block," Lloyd said. "From that point, I was like, 'Game's over. We won. We did it.'"
All of that unfolded a few feet away from the First Amendment Sports' tent, with the audible screaming overtaking the broadcast.
"The thing that shocked me the most was the kick return," Meringolo said. "Logan-Neely takes it back the distance. To me, that was the moment you thought that was the game. That kickoff return was super special. It would have been a great ending and a great game had it ended that way."
Olu Fashanu – a 6-foot-6, 317-pound tackle, was Williams' lead protector at Gonzaga. The current Penn State standout likely will join Williams as a top-five pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Fashanu insists the sideline was not in panic mode after Neely's kickoff return.
"We were all calm," Fashanu said. "We were just thinking, 'All right, we got 15 seconds left, let's see what we can do.' Honestly, we were staying up. No one on the sideline was angry at all. We were calm. The rest is history."
Well, that is mostly true. Trivers was calculating how to project calm despite the roller-coaster of emotions after losing the lead.
"There were some young men that were shaken," Trivers said. "There were some with not just tears in their eyes, but tears running down their faces."
Meanwhile, Hardie was still heated in the DeMatha press box about the third-and-33 that led to the previous touchdown. At that point it was, "We don't deserve to win this game, but we'll take it." Then, Hardie quickly became upset again. Williams hit Engram on a deep out to push the ball to the 47-yard-line with four seconds left. That gave Gonzaga one shot.
"The biggest play in that last drive was not the Hail Mary," Hardie said. "It was the play before it. They completed a deep out to get them in place to get the Hail Mary. How many high school quarterbacks do you know that can complete a deep out against a secondary that likely will have three pros?"
*****
Williams took the snap against a three-man rush, dropped back, scooted forward, dropped back then stepped into the pocket and launched the Hail Mary as Meringolo blurted out, "Is God purple? We're about to find out."
Trivers did not follow the ball into the end zone. He had his eyes in another direction.
"We launched that baby, and where my eyes go is right to the official on the sideline at the pylon," Trivers said. "I knew when the ball went up – I'm watching the ball – you could see, someone has got it. It didn't hit the ground, but there are so many bodies in the scrum. You know, either they're fighting for it or somebody caught it."
Fashanu did not get a look either.
"I was still blocking when Caleb threw the ball, so I didn't really realize it," Fashanu said. "I don't know. It was kind of crazy. It was kind of like an out-of-body-experience. I was dumbfounded. I was like, 'Did that really just happen?'"
Lloyd did not watch, until he did. He saw Cross slip just before leaping up to knock down the pass and the ball thread between the other DeMatha defenders.
"It was a slow motion for sure," Lloyd said. "I kind of had a couple double-takes. When he did it, when the ball got in the air I turned around and was like, 'I'm not going to watch it.' So I didn't watch some of it, and then as soon as I turned around I saw the ball in the guys' hands."
Josh Wallace – one of the DeMatha defensive backs in that scrum – knows exactly where he was in the picture.
"I believe on the picture I was on the outside," Wallace said. "I literally walked three steps and dropped to my knees. You can find the video. I was just like, 'What?' I was the last one out of the locker room. That much I can remember. I was hurting."
Marshall – who caught the Hail Mary the day before at practice – had somehow come up with the ball between four DeMatha defenders, which the official confirmed after a few tense seconds.
Gonzaga 46, DeMatha 43.
"It was kind of crazy just coming down with that ball so low of a chance to be caught," Marshall said. "When I came out of the pile, it was a feeling like maybe we lost the game already and I was dreaming that it happened. It wasn't real for at least a half hour after the catch."
Lloyd threw his helmet. Several DeMatha players fell to their knees. Gonzaga players rushed to the student section and celebrated.
"When (the referee's) hands went up, I still at this time can see it and tears come down my face," Trivers said. "Those hands went up, and I collapsed. Literally collapsed on it."
Joe Reyda – a longtime Gonzaga athletic director who passed away on June 27 – was there to lift Trivers up. Trivers said he can still close his eyes and hear Reyda's reaction: "Coach, we caught it! He caught it! We won! We won!"
Najarian felt helpless. After all, the DeMatha quarterback who played his best game was not on the field for the final 39 seconds with the exception of holding an extra point after the kickoff return.
"It was weird just because from my point of view," Najarian said. "Everyone says, 'Oh it was the craziest game ever' and I was part of the early stages and back and forth, but all of the kind of crazy stuff that happened – I was just watching. I was on the sideline the whole time."
Brooks – who admits he has tried to put that game deep in his memory bank – concedes how special the moment was.
"I think that was the only way that game should have ended – either way," Brooks said. "Whether it was the Hail Mary of the kickoff return to end the game, I just think when you have a game with that much parity, a star-studded game like that, it was a fitting ending."
*****
Meringolo had no idea what he said – but that Hail Mary call traveled fast. Gonzaga fans storming the field screamed, "I can't believe you said that!" Strachan – maintaining a sense of objectivity while holding to his DeMatha roots said – "Thank God it wasn't me."
If the call wasn't premeditated, then where did it come from?
"I have no idea," Meringolo said. " I know it was the result of hours and hours and hours of us talking about high school football, high school sports, where we're from and what we're all about."
The Hail Mary highlight traveled faster. The hired production crew encouraged Meringolo, Ricca and Strachan to cut the highlights and send it to ESPN. They tried through a few connections then headed to Tommy Joe's, a local bar in Bethesda, Md. Meringolo watched the "SportsCenter Top 10" segment as it ran through the typical NFL highlights from Sunday's action.
"It gets to No. 1 and there it is," Meringolo said. "It's our play. Our voices. It's Caleb throwing to John Marshall, and I lose it. I jump up. I am standing on the stool. I'm standing on the bar. I'm yelling, 'That's us! We did it!' There were 20 people in that bar, but it sounded like there were 100. Probably more emotion in that moment than the Hail Mary moment."
ESPN anchor Scott Van Pelt – a Brookville, Md. native – dedicated his "Best Thing I Saw Today" segment on the Gonzaga-DeMatha rivalry, and the celebration was on.
"I can't even tell you what time we left the bar," Meringolo said.
*****
Five years later, Williams is the brightest star in college football. The Patrick Mahomes' comparisons continue heading into the 2024 NFL Draft, and seemingly every week there is another readily-retweetable throw to add to the highlight reel.
For those who were there on Nov. 18, 2018, that makes sense.
"Nothing surprises me with Caleb," Trivers said. "I tell people I would be a liar to tell you, 'I knew Caleb would win the Heisman when he was a freshman here.' I will tell you he has done so many things that you think, 'Did I just see that happen?' He does it so often, that you realize he intentionally did that. It's not luck."
Fashanu still texts Williams – and a College Football Playoff matchup between the high school teammates, not to mention future NFL games – are on the table.
"Caleb is one of the best players I have ever played with," Fashanu said. "Being on the field with him at the same time; the way he was able to make something out of nothing is a unique trait that he has. Obviously, you see him still doing that to this day."
Marshall recalled seeing a highlight last season and stopped what he was doing.
"I remember vividly watching him play against Notre Dame and me going, 'Yep I've seen that before,'" Marshall said. "That's Caleb. Just the way he evades pressure and is able to throw and play. Even the offseason before he was the QB in high school, we saw that. It's kind of nice for the Gonzaga players just to see Caleb have that much success."
Caleb Williams HEISMAN RUN 😳 #usc #notredame pic.twitter.com/71bibbFSrF
— Brandon Mason (@BrandonMasonSho) November 27, 2022
That goes for the DeMatha players and coaches too, which is a twist in that WCAC brotherhood. When the game is over, these players and coaches support each other at the next level and beyond.
"You can have the perfect coverage," Brooks said. "Our defense player for player outmatched their guys, but his ability to extend plays is what kept them in the game. I just think he's the best at it."
"I am as big a Caleb Williams fan as there comes," Hardie said. "He's from Bowie. I live in Bowie. When he signed with Oklahoma, I was telling all my friends, 'Spencer Rattler is in trouble.' I predicted he would win a Heisman and be the No. 1 pick. He's the best player I have ever seen in person."
As fate would have it, Williams played with Rattler for one year at Oklahoma, then Lloyd would play with Rattler for one year at South Carolina. When Lloyd entered the transfer portal, the chance to play with Williams was too much to pass up – even if he has to look at those Gonzaga shorts almost every day.
"We said we're going to make a bet someday, whoever loses the bet they're going to have to wear the other schools' stuff," Lloyd said. "Either I have to wear something Gonzaga or he has to wear something DeMatha."
Even better if that happens in the NFL. How many players take that much pride in their high school?
The ones that played on Nov. 18, 2018, can answer that question.
