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.”
Under Ben Johnson’s tutelage, Williams is becoming an elite NFL quarterback. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
Williams’ next challenge: Mike Macdonald’s vaunted Super Bowl defense, as the Bears (5-2) travel to Seattle to face the Seahawks (4-3) on Monday Night Football in a matchup of NFC heavyweights.
Williams’ former coaches and teammates shared what makes the quarterback’s unique ability to rise to the occasion in high-stakes situations.
Former USC offensive coordinator and O-line coach Josh Henson sat in on Williams’ meetings with head coach Lincoln Riley and assistant Luke Huard, whose responsibilities are more directly tied to the quarterback.
There are always mountains of movies to watch. They communicate through plays and teaching situations. Game knowledge is shared. These meetings were pushed, in part, by Williams. They didn’t force him to stay. He wanted to stay until he felt he had all the answers he needed.
That also means randomly walking into Henson’s office, asking him:
“Coach, can you show me this protection you were talking about on the offensive line the other day?”
“Can you teach me why your ID is like this on the front in the run game?”
Williams was a sponge in meetings with USC coach Lincoln Riley and his staff. (Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“That kind of curiosity and desire to know everything there is to know about football … really served him well to make those plays. [clutch] wait,” Henson, now Purdue’s OC and tight ends coach, told me.
That’s why those around him became numb. Williams regularly produced spectacular skills and plays.
At the start of his junior high school season, Gonzaga hosted national powerhouse American Heritage School (Plantation, Fla.). The guests went wild with the crowd of “Merry Christmas!” chants after taking a 7-0 and eventually 14-7 lead. They thought the home-team fans were crazy. The truth is they just know what’s coming. They want to congratulate the opponent for tasting what it feels like to be up.
Williams led Gonzaga’s 26-0 unanswered run for the victory.
“The dude is almost like a Jedi,” Randy Trivers, Williams’ coach at Gonzaga, told me. “He’s The One. He’s like Neo in ‘The Matrix.’
“It was an ordinary thing for Caleb to do extraordinary things.”
As a true freshman at Oklahoma, in his first extended action as a college football player, Williams replaced starter Spencer Rattler in the second quarter and led the Sooners on a 21-point comeback and the game-winning drive to defeat 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 people deep down, at the end of the day, they can say what they want, but people either don’t love those moments and don’t relish them, or they do,” Lincoln Riley, who coached Williams at USC and Oklahoma, told me. “And I think he always wants those moments, wants to be around, and is willing to put himself out there to make the play, knowing that sometimes it’s going to happen and that’s great. And sometimes you don’t, right?
“There’s going to be failure that comes with that, and you can’t be afraid of that failure. And I don’t think he’s there yet.”
USC’s pass-catchers will do extra conditioning to prepare themselves for whatever Williams might do during a game — or even in practice. On a third-down phase in a USC practice, Williams was pressured from the right side, rolled left and instinctually switched hands to rip off a left-handed pass, hitting a receiver over the middle.
Receivers know that a typical dig route can turn into an explosive 60-plus yard play in a scramble drill. His offensive linemen know to block four to six seconds rather than three or four.
“You didn’t see what was going on,” Rams offensive lineman Justin Dedich, who blocked for Williams at USC, told me, speaking from an OL perspective. “You just know something good is going to happen.”
Offensive lineman Justin Dedich (No. 57) has been known to hold his blocks for Williams, always hoping for the unexpected. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
Williams’ offensive coordinator at Gonzaga, Danny Schaechter, would always end his play calls on the quarterback with a similar message: “Stay on the beach.” It’s a reminder to stay even-keeled. There may be big waves and storms in the game action. But at the beach, us good. We are enjoying it. Everything is calm.
“I still message him before games and stuff,” Schaechter told me. “Like, ‘Hey, man, have fun. Stay on the beach.'”
Even without reminders, that’s how Williams operates. He always had a stoic demeanor in high-stakes moments, according to former coaches and teammates. He treats skills like games. He prides himself on how he goes through his reads, how he looks at defensive backs. He didn’t want to waste energy on anything other than what was in front of him.
“He would always tell us, ‘Everybody breathe. Take a deep breath,'” former USC wide receiver Brenden Rice told me.
Williams wants the whole game on his shoulders, bad.
Texans Pro Bowl safety Calen Bullock remembers Williams’ first day at USC in 2022. The two went out to eat with some teammates. They were sitting in the car, talking and introducing themselves.
Williams’ message to the group:
I’m going to win the Heisman.
“He said it, and he went out and did it,” Bullock told me. “I’ll always remember that.”
To understand Williams, Riley explains, you have to know how much time he spent consciously designing his life.
“He decided a long time ago, he and his family, that this is what he wanted to do for a living,” the USC coach told me. “And so everything they’ve done is to try to position himself to be able to do it, and in the belief that he can do it. And so I think a lot of his preparation started years and years and years ago, and it’s pretty much a big, steady, steady build-up to this moment now.”
That belief became fuel for others.
“No question, it affects how you call a game or some of the decisions that you make in a game, knowing that you have a guy that is capable of, and is not going to be scared of, those types of moments,” Riley told me. “I’m sure Ben [Johnson] would say the same thing now. Feeling like that is a huge advantage. … If we can just get the ball and in this type of situation that the game is within reach, we like our chances.”
In May, Gonzaga College High School unveiled a statue of a soaring Eagle on campus. Written below: “11.18.18,” commemorating the last-second Hail Mary that won the school that year’s conference championship. It is meant to serve as an inspiration for future generations of Gonzaga students.
For the football world, it’s also a permanent reminder of what Williams is capable of doing at any time.