In Washington, D.C., on the night of Nov. 18, 2018, the lights started to go out for Gonzaga College High School’s football team.
The Eagles, who’d trailed 20-0 in the first quarter, fought their way back into the conference championship game against rival DeMatha Catholic. A touchdown gave them a lead with 29 seconds left … but then they allowed an 80-plus yard kickoff-return score with 15 seconds remaining.
Gonzaga trailed 43-40. No timeouts left.
“We claw our way back into a winning position,” John Marshall, a Gonzaga receiver at the time, told me, “and then we’re kind of just like, ‘wow.’ A lot of defeat sets in on the sidelines.”
But with just 10 seconds left for the offense, Caleb Williams still saw opportunity. Between the time DeMatha scored and when his offense took the field, the sophomore quarterback — playing through a fractured ankle suffered on Gonzaga’s previous possession — exhorted the offensive line:
“I need you guys to block for me.”
“I need a chance to get it down there.”
He went over to the wide receivers:
“There’s still a lot of time left.”
“We can make a play.”
Williams completed a deep out on the first play, leading his receiver out of bounds just inside the 50 to stop the clock at four seconds. Then he connected on a 53-yard Hail Mary heave to Marshall in the end zone as time expired, putting Gonzaga on the winning side of one of the greatest high school football games of all time.
“I think he’s always known, I guess internally, that he has been special,” Marshall, who played college football at Navy, told me. “Understanding that, ‘I am special. I have these abilities, but I’m not gonna let it derail me from achieving more.’”
Caleb Williams’ “Iceman” roots started in high school as the quarterback of the Gonzaga College Eagles in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
This is the Caleb Williams that the NFL now knows.
The “Iceman,” who’s ascending into superstardom in Year 3 with the Chicago Bears, is arguably the NFL’s most clutch performer. In 2025, Williams engineered seven comeback victories in which the Bears trailed in the final two minutes of regulation, including the playoffs, the most in a season by any quarterback under the age of 25 in league history.
“I feel more comfortable in those moments,” the Bears quarterback said last year. “I think my heart rate drops. Everything kind of settles in. It’s gotta-have-it moments. I think I’ve done a good job with that over my career in those gotta-have-it moments.”
This year, the Bears haven’t yet needed WIlliams’ heroics late in games. What we’ve seen, primarily, are the major leaps he’s made playing on schedule under head coach and playcaller Ben Johnson.
But he’s still lethal down the stretch. In his first primetime showdown of the season, the Bears’ 30-24 victory over the New England Patriots on Thursday Night Football last week, Williams completed more than 76.4% of his passes and led two scoring drives in the second half of the one-score victory.
“I love just where he is mindset-wise right now,” Johnson said of his QB last week. “No one’s more critical of him than himself at this point. … He’s the first one to say it and we go through it and [detail] where [he] can improve while still highlighting the improvements we’ve already made along the way.”
Under the tutelage of Ben Johnson, Williams became an elite NFL quarterback. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
Williams’ next challenge: Mike Macdonald’s Super Bowl defense, as the Bears (5-2) travel to Seattle to face the Seahawks (4-3) on Monday Night Football in an NFC heavyweight matchup.
Williams’ former coaches and teammates have shared what makes the quarterback uniquely capable of taking on high-stakes situations.
Former USC offensive coordinator and O-line coach Josh Henson sat in on Williams’ meetings with Lincoln head coach Lee and assistant coach Lucas Huard, whose responsibilities were more directly tied to the quarterback.
There will always be mountains as always. They talked through stories and coaching situations. It is a common knowledge game. These encounters were driven in part by Williams. They do not force him to stay. He wanted to continue until he felt he had all the answers he needed.
That also meant walking around Henson’s office, peppered with questions;
“Coach, can you teach me this defense that you say you stumbled upon the other day?”
“Teach me why you guys run that front like this in the game?”
Williams was a sponge in meetings with USC Lincoln coach Leo and his staff. (Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“That kind of curiosity and wanting to know everything there is to know about football … it really served him well to be able to go do those games in them.” [clutch] moments, “Henson, now Purdue’s OC and tight ends coach, told me.”
So much so that those who are around him are amazed. Williams regularly performed spectacularly in practices and games.
At the start of his junior season in high school, Gonzaga was at the national power American Heritage School (Plantation, Fla.). The visitors were disturbed by “Merry Christmas!” Song 7-0 after the reception and then lead 14-7. The fans thought the team was crazy. The fact is that he just knew what was going to happen. They wanted to congratulate their opponent by tasting what he felt was like.
Williams led 26-0 without an answer from Gonzaga for the victory.
“The dude is almost like a Jedi,” Randy Trivers, Williams’ Gonzaga coach, told me. “He’s. He’s like Neo from ‘The Matrix.’
“Caleb is said to do wonders.”
As a true freshman at Oklahoma, in the first extended action for a college football player, Williams replaced Spencer Rattler in the second half and Sosores led a 21-point comeback and game-winning drive to beat Texas 55-48 in the 2021 Red River Rivalry game.
Williams entered the 2021 Red River Rivalry game against Texas in the second quarter and led a 21-point comeback for Oklahoma. (Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images)
“I think deep down, at the end of the day, people can say what they want, but people either don’t like those moments and don’t enjoy them, or they do,” Leo Lincoln, who coached Williams at USC and Oklahoma, told me. “And he always wants to always want to be in them and he wants to put some effort to make the game, knowing that at some point it will happen and that’s great.
“There’s also going to be failure, and you can’t fear that failure. And I don’t think you ever will.”
USC’s catchers will do extra conditioning to prepare for whatever Williams does during the game — or even in practice. In one USC practice in the third quarter, Williams got pressure from the right side, rolled to his left and instinctively ripped his hands to the left for a pass, hitting the receiver over the middle.
The receivers knew that the usual trenches could drill a path in more than 60 yards of explosives in the emergency room. His unpleasant features are more than three or four paragraphs four to six.
“You never see what’s going to happen,” Rams offensive lineman Justin Dedich, who Williams shut down at USC, told me, speaking from an OL perspective. “You just knew something big was going to happen.”
Offensive lineman Justin Dedich (No. 57) knew Williams was holding his wedges, always expecting the unexpected. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
Williams’ offensive coordinator at Gonzaga, Danny Schaechter, always calls his quarterback with a similar message: “Stay on the beach.” There was also a memorial to the stay of the keel. There could be great waves and storms in the game of action. But we are on the beach good. We are enjoying this. Everything is calm.
“I still message him before games and stuff,” Schaechter told me. “I’m like, ‘Hey, man, have fun. Stay on the beach.’
Even without reminders, that’s how Williams would work. He always had a stoic demeanor in the most important moments, according to former coaches and teammates. He treated the exercises like games. He’s proud of how he reads through his teammates, how he looks at defensive backs. He didn’t want to waste his energy on anything other than what was in front of him.
“He would always tell us, ‘Everybody breathes.’ take a deep breath
Williams wanted so much of the game on his shoulders; badly.
Texans Pro Bowl safety Calen Bullock remembers Williams on his first day at USC in 2022. The two went out to eat with two teammates. They sat in the car talking and getting to know each other.
A message to the Williams group:
I’m going to go for the Heisman.
And he said, and he went out and did, “The Taurus told me.” “You always remember.”
To understand Williams, Leo explained, you need to know how long he’s been thinking about his life.
“Two years ago, he and his family decided that this was what he wanted to do for a living,” the USC coach told me. “And so everything I did was try to do it myself, and I believe that I could do what was going to happen. So I think a lot of preparation began years and years and years, and it was kind of a big, constant, steady build-up to these moments now.”
That faith became food for others.
“No question, it affects how you play the game or some of the decisions you make in the game, knowing you have a capable person and not being afraid of those types of moments,” Leo told me. “I’m sure Ben [Johnson] he would say the same now. The convenience is great as well. … If we can just get the ball and get in this type of situation with the game, I like our chances.
In May, Gonzaga College High School unveiled a statue of the resurrection eagle on campus. Inscribed on the bottom: “11.18.18” commemorating Williams’ second Hail Mary win as the school’s conference championship that year. This is intended to serve as an encouragement to future generations of Gonzaga students.
For the soccer world, it is also a permanent reminder of what Williams is capable of at any given moment.