The legend of Reggie Williams: How the best prep receiver in state history ended up at UW

So the best prep receiver in Washington state history is at a Stanford football camp in June 1999. He’s just finished his sophomore year of high school, and he’s there with his buddy of the same age, a quarterback. As they’re stretching on the second or third day, there are a few older players running routes on the field. One is shirtless, wearing cleats and black spandex. He moves like a pro. “Silky smooth,” Matt Griffith remembers.

Well, yes. It’s Jerry Rice.

It was early in the morning before the June heat had set in, and the presence of the NFL’s all-time leading receiver had the sidelines buzzing.

The campers were awestruck.

Most of them, anyway.

Reggie Williams put on his cleats and started toward Rice, yelling.

“Hey Jerry! Hey Jerry!” Griffith remembers Williams shouting. “You ain’t got shit on me!”

If Rice heard him, he didn’t let on. Griffith held his pal back and they went about their day. Williams had spoken loudly enough already with his performance that week. Coaches spotted him in the stretch lines on Day 1, then watched him dominate drills. He’s pretty sure Williams left with a scholarship offer. Dozens more would come his way over the next 18 months.

“In my mind,” Griffith said, “I think that’s when the legend was born.”

There are must-get prospects in every recruiting class, players with dozens of offers who any school would be thrilled to add to their roster. Some of them might play as freshmen. Some might even start a game or two. The truly elite might start from Day 1.

But how many become the best player on a top-25 team the moment they step on campus?

Reggie Williams was all of that — and he’d let you know about it, too.

Catching passes from Cody Pickett, Williams re-wrote most of Washington’s receiving record book from 2001 through 2003, setting school records for career receptions, yards and yards per game. His 16 career 100-yard receiving games are twice as many as anyone else in school history. There have been eight 1,000-yard receiving seasons in Washington history; Williams has three of them, and he is the only player to do it as a freshman. For his efforts as a sophomore in 2002 — 94 catches, 1,454 yards, 11 touchdowns — he was voted a consensus All-American. He fulfilled his goal of a three-year college career, declaring for the NFL Draft after his junior season. The Jacksonville Jaguars picked him No. 9 overall. No Washington receiver has ever been drafted higher.

“Now that I sit here years later, I think I should have thrown him more balls, if that were humanly possible,” said Keith Gilbertson, Washington’s offensive coordinator for Williams’ first two seasons and the head coach in 2003.

Before he became one of Washington’s best players ever, Williams was arguably the top recruit in state history. Some services rated him the No. 1 receiver in the 2001 class and most had him as a top-10 prospect nationally, regardless of position. He’s one of six five-star recruits to sign with the Huskies since 2000, per the 247Sports database, and of that group, only Shaq Thompson was assigned a higher composite score — by two ten-thousandths of a percent.

Listed at 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds as a senior at Lakewood (Wash.) Lakes, Williams cut the figure of a grown man and played like one, too. As a senior, he caught 45 passes for 811 yards and 16 touchdowns — meaning he essentially averaged a touchdown every third reception — and added 34 rushes for 512 yards (more than 15 yards per carry) and another seven touchdowns. He played safety, too, and snagged a whopping eight interceptions as a senior after recording five as a junior. He also ran a 10.76 to win the 3A state championship in the 100-meter dash his senior year and had a 35-inch vertical leap as a sophomore.

“There were times I would just throw it as far as I could,” Griffith said, “and he would just go get it. You couldn’t overthrow him. Nobody could cover him.”

His coach, Dave Miller, cites another statistic, albeit unofficial.

“I’ll never forget one game — I believe the ambulance left that stadium three times with collarbone (injuries) because he hit them so hard,” Miller said. “You don’t expect a 6-4, 210-pound safety to come down in high school and hit guys like he did.”

Williams was so big, so fast and so physical that at least early on, some college evaluators wondered if his future might be on defense; a newspaper story his junior year speculated that he might be recruited as an outside linebacker. Another evaluator told SuperPrep magazine that he could see him at tight end, or that, “He even could be a Jevon Kearse type. He has that kind of frame.”

Jesse Hendrix saw it every day at practice and in offseason workouts. A cornerback who wound up a four-year starter at Eastern Washington and played a few seasons in the CFL, Hendrix remains one of Williams’ closest friends. Miller describes epic battles between the two at practice, iron sharpening iron. Even at receiver, Hendrix said, Williams embodied a defensive mindset.

“He was more of the aggressor,” Hendrix said. “He’s not getting hit. He wants to go hit somebody. His style of play was more representative of a defensive player than a receiver.”

Williams, though, wanted the ball in his hands, and who could argue? Certainly not Bobby Bowden, the legendary Florida State coach. He was one of the dozens of coaches who traveled to Lakewood to inquire about Williams. Bowden asked Miller to see some of Williams’ game film, so Miller popped in a VHS tape. The first play was a fly sweep. Williams took the handoff running horizontally toward the sideline, stopped on a dime just shy of the boundary, let a defender zip past him, then outran everyone else for an 80-yard touchdown.

Bowden told Miller he could stop the video. “I’ve seen enough,” he said.

“I had everybody in my office,” Miller said. “Coaches would come through, and as soon as they’d leave, the secretary or principal would run in and say, ‘Was that Bobby Bowden? Was that Nick Saban?’”

Born in Germany, Williams lived with his family in Virginia before his father’s military career brought them to Lakewood, Wash., near Tacoma. His parents, Reggie Sr. and Wanda, prioritized education; Reggie Jr. carried around a 3.4 or 3.5 grade-point average throughout high school. “Without having straight As and Bs, there was no even playing any sport,” he said. Miller remembers him carrying textbooks with him on the bus to away games. Williams also worked in high school, first at McDonald’s, then at Footaction, then at Foot Locker. (He was fired from McDonald’s, he laments, and muses now: “I should go buy it.”)

That’s sort of the thing about Reggie: Any confidence, any bravado, any self-assured proclamations of greatness were not only backed up on the field — they were underscored by a work ethic that Miller described as unmatched. He was a freak athlete with NFL measurables as a 17-year-old, yes, but he also attacked the weight room as a skinny freshman, back when Miller called him “Bambi” for his spindly, uncoordinated frame. Young players lacking muscle often shy away from the weights, Miller said, because they’re intimidated by how little they can put up. Reggie didn’t care. By his senior year, he was benching 300 pounds and squatting 460.

Once, Williams showed up to a basketball game with grass stains streaked across his varsity uniform. The reason? He and Griffith had decided to throw some routes before the game, and Williams had made a few diving catches, fully extended.

Out of season, Hendrix said he would join Williams in the weight room, then run conditioning drills on the track. Two hours later, Hendrix was spent. But Williams was just getting warmed up, on the phone with Griffith, arranging for other teammates to meet them at the stadium for one-on-ones. “It’s scorching, middle of the summer, and we’re going on like hour four of getting after it, probably hadn’t eaten anything since the morning,” Hendrix said. “He stayed revved up.”

“If you went out in January and got in your car after school,” Miller said, “he was out there with 15 dudes throwing the ball, no matter what the weather was like.”

Letters poured into Reggie’s mailbox. Griffith and Williams parked their cars next to each other in the school parking lot, and it seemed like every day, Williams was telling him about a new scholarship offer. His childhood favorites were Florida State and Michigan.

“To keep it a buck, man, I wanted to get away,” Williams said. “Sophomore year, junior year, when I just started playing varsity and you first get your couple letters, I just always saw myself somewhere like that.”

Though Bowden was interested enough to come see him, Williams didn’t end up as interested in the Seminoles. Instead, it was Michigan that presented the greatest threat to hometown Washington, with UCLA and Notre Dame also in consideration. Williams visited each campus.

He recalled each trip, some 21 years later.

Michigan: “They took me to my first little frat, Greek Row party. It wasn’t on Greek Row, it was somewhere in Detroit. I got to see some real Kappas (Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity) and real AKAs (Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority), and everybody did their slide and shimmy in the circle, which was all the way new to me. For me to see it at 18, I was like, ‘Oh, this is it right here.’ … The whole aura and mystique of Michigan — that Blue and Maize helmet and No. 1 jersey, that was tough.”

UCLA: “UCLA was a great visit, too. It’s probably one of the nicest campuses in the country. Being able to go from Brentwood to Westwood to Hollywood to the Santa Monica beach, to the pier — UCLA’s really got everything you could ask for. You see a couple Hollywood stars. It’s a lot. It was tough to turn down. Now, football-wise, I could never really see myself wearing the powder blue. But what they didn’t have football-wise, they made up for it academically and socially, being able to have a second life after football.” (A 2001 story in The (Tacoma) News Tribune also mentioned Williams meeting actor Jaleel White, who famously portrayed Steve Urkel on the show Family Matters.)

Washington: “I just remember the camaraderie with the recruits, along with all the players at the time at Washington, how much of a family atmosphere it was, and how much they made me feel like one of the guys.” (It’s funny how some things stick out all these years later: Williams also remembers banging his head on the garage door at a party hosted by some players at their house in Lake City.)

Huskies coach Rick Neuheisel arranged for a seaplane to pick Williams up at American Lake — a treatment not afforded any other visiting prospect that weekend — buzzing the Space Needle en route to Neuheisel’s lakefront home in the ritzy eastside suburb of Medina. His wife, Susan, had greeted Williams at the dock with a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies — “a serious weapon” in recruiting, Neuheisel says. Williams visited exclusively with the head coach before joining the rest of the visitors for dinner at the Space Needle.

He also visited Notre Dame, where he had attended a camp in between his junior and senior seasons. The non-coed dorms were a no-go.

What was the most memorable part of those trips? The funniest thing that happened?

“Man, you know I can’t tell you that,” Williams says with a laugh.

Not even two decades later?

“Let’s just say I found out what Altoids are for,” Williams said, still laughing. “It changed my life forever.”

There was one late wrinkle, Williams said, that might not have been as publicized: Pete Carroll, who had been hired by USC in mid-December, made a late push to get Williams to take an official visit. He never did — USC was down, and Carroll was too late — though Williams immediately connected with Carroll and called him “a great dude.”

If he’d gotten the job a year earlier, who knows? The first time Carroll called Williams, as he sat in Miller’s office, “He put me on the phone with Keyshawn Johnson. I was like, ‘What?!’ Keyshawn, that was everything for me. I’m really, actually talking to one of my idols? That was one of the tougher ones I had to hold off.”

He figures it was a Tuesday night, the week before he would announce his college choice on live television. The two decades since have blurred some of the details, but he remembers this much: Lloyd Carr called him. They spoke briefly. And when he hung up, Reggie was certain, if only in his mind.

He was going to Michigan.

“I was just like, ‘All right, I’m sticking to my guns,’” Williams said. “I’m going to Michigan. I’m going to Big Blue.”

Does Carr ever wonder if things might have been different if he’d called, instead, Wednesday or Thursday? Forty-eight hours later, the phone rang again. This time, it was Neuheisel. Washington’s coach had just won a Rose Bowl in his second season. He had taken the lead in Williams’ recruitment, calling him “every day it was legal to do so.” Ultimately, Williams saw Washington as a program on the rise (starting, if you can believe it, with Neuheisel’s famed decision to bring back gold helmets) and bought into the idea of helping build the hometown school into a power.

He hung up the phone. Michigan was out. Washington was in. He spent the next several days politely fielding phone calls from coaches. He told his parents and Miller where he was going but didn’t tell anyone else. Hendrix recalls now: “I thought he was going to Michigan.” (Miller did concede to a reporter following Williams’ announcement that they likely would have canceled the TV appearance were he choosing any school but Washington.)

Seated the following Monday in the Fox Sports Northwest studios in Bellevue, Williams surveyed hats representing finalists Washington, Michigan and UCLA. He first grabbed the UCLA hat, a fake-out. Then he pulled the Washington cap onto his head, punctuating one of the most hotly contested recruitments in school history. He joined a class that recruiting publications would consider one of the 10 or 15 best in the country.

What did Neuheisel say on the phone that fateful Thursday? Williams says he doesn’t really remember, “because Neuheisel could talk. I can’t really say it was one thing. It maybe just was that I had talked to him after Coach Carr, and he got the last call in. More than anything, it was affirmation for me that Washington was a place that I needed to go.”

The Huskies had emphasized that their offense would look different without quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo, whose running ability prompted Neuheisel to heavily feature the option. Pickett, a third-year sophomore, was a true pocket passer, and the Huskies also were adding junior college transfer Taylor Barton and Casey Paus, a touted recruit and the younger brother of UCLA quarterback Cory Paus (the fact they had the younger Paus committed, Williams said, was a point in UW’s favor).

“I think we had a plan for him that he liked,” Gilbertson said. “This is how we can feature you. This is how many balls we think you should get. This is how we’ll create big plays for you. I think he liked what he heard and stayed home. I thought him and Cody Pickett would be a real good combination. I thought Cody was going to be a real good player, and I told him that.”

There also was the matter of staying local so his parents could easily attend his games. Hendrix remembers going to a game during one of his bye weeks and observing Reggie’s dad at a tailgate party.

“He was as happy as I’ve ever seen him — talking shop, talking football, wearing his son’s jersey,” Hendrix said. “I think his dad enjoyed that, and I don’t think it would have been the same if he’d gone away to school.”

The News Tribune asked Williams the same question the day of his announcement: What did Neuheisel say to put the Huskies over the top?

The coach’s final words on that Thursday call, Williams said then: “Come on, be a Dawg.”

Reggie wasn’t just different on the field. His personality had a certain flair, too. He liked fashion and wore a top hat to prom. Once in college, before a receivers meeting, Griffith noticed Williams listening to music on his headphones, rocking out as if it were heavy metal. It turned out to be the main theme to Superman. And Griffith swears this is true: Atop his schoolwork at Lakes, rather than his name, Reggie would write: “The Phenomenon.”

“And he was dead serious!” Griffith said. “The thing about him was, he was loved by all his teachers. He was just this fun-loving dude that was very confident in himself and was the best guy to be around.”

That confidence got him in trouble early in his college career, if trivially, in an incident that must be mentioned in any recounting of Reggie’s legend. In those days, the Huskies held preseason camp at The Evergreen State College, some 65 miles south of campus in Olympia. During dinner each night, the upperclassmen would ask a freshman to stand on a chair before the entire team. They would ask him questions such as, “Will you ever quit?” and others intended to put him in an uncomfortable position.

It was in that spirit that someone asked Williams, as he remembers it: “Are you better than ET?”

ET, of course, was Charles Frederick, the speedy wideout from Florida, himself a national top-10 receiver prospect in the same class. Reggie and ET were pals. So rather than pit himself against his buddy, Williams figured he was better off making a blanket statement.

“I’m not better than ET — I’m better than everybody in here,” Williams said, sending the cafeteria into a ruckus. Other teammates remember a more profane response, but a similar message.

“I’m better than all of y’all,” is how it is related by Kai Ellis, a junior college signee in the same class.

The next question, best Williams can remember: Are you going to catch more balls than Jerramy Stevens, the Huskies’ star tight end? There was no backing down at that point. Reggie shot back: “If they throw me the ball, then yeah, I’ll catch more balls than J-Steve.” That provoked another uproar.

“What’d you think? I’m confident, yeah. I know my ability. I’m not going to act all meek and weak,” Williams says now. “I’m gonna let you know.”

He won back some of the upperclassmen by singing Jodeci — it might have been “Freek’n You,” but he’s not certain — though not enough to evade comeuppance. Several teammates hid in his dorm room, jumped out when he returned home after meetings that night, then held him down and started shaving off his braids before pivoting to his eyebrows, until he was left with “like one-eighth of an eyebrow on one side, and nothing on the other.”

Rather than wallow, he resolved to get even on the practice field. The next day, he said, “Everybody got it in one-on-ones. Everybody got it in 7-on-7. Everybody got it in team. I think after one-on-ones when I started killing everybody, they realized, ‘Oh, shit, this little young boy can go through the fire and come out of it.’”

Coaches appreciated his response, though published reports at the time also indicated that defensive players got their licks in for a day or two.

“He didn’t pout and cry and moan and threaten to quit and go home,” Gilbertson said. “He never said a word about it to a coach. He just took it, went right back out and practiced and competed. And I think the upperclassmen knew right away, ‘Hey, this guy’s special.’”

The incident foretold a special freshman year in which Williams began with a 134-yard performance in a season-opening victory over Michigan, of all schools. He dropped the first two passes thrown his way, admitting to nerves that numbed his body. But a 74-yard catch-and-run in the third quarter left little question that his impact would be immediate. He finished the year with 60 catches for 1,035 yards, highlighted by an 11-catch, 203-yard game in the Apple Cup against star Washington State cornerback Marcus Trufant.

And one lesson learned, if not necessarily the one his teammates intended to impart.

“You don’t realize,” Williams said, “how much you need your eyebrows until you don’t have them.”

Now 39 and living in the Houston area, Williams reflects on his recruitment on a June afternoon via telephone from San Antonio, where he finally has some downtime between his son’s AAU basketball games. He married his wife, Brandie Wilkins, a former volleyball player at North Texas, in 2012. They have three boys, Rush (12), Raider (10) and Rockett (8). They all play football and basketball and run track. The two oldest play baseball. Rockett is into taekwondo. Reggie spends his days shuttling them to practices and games and tournaments.

“Rush is my receiver, Raider is my quarterback and Rockett might be my left tackle/D-end,” Reggie says, predicting that his youngest might grow even taller than him.

Williams’ recruitment roughly coincided with the acceleration of the internet recruiting era, though it bears little resemblance to the pursuit of five-star prospects today. He attended only two camps, both hosted by college programs, and didn’t have to navigate social media. There were no HUDL clips, no unofficial visit sprees, no photo shoots.

“It really seems prehistoric that I got a lot of national attention without ever making a highlight tape,” he said.

He’s just starting to pay attention to recruiting again, he said, as his sons grow older and some of his old teammates become more involved in 7-on-7. Today’s rumored name, image and likeness sums blow his mind. “I truly can’t imagine it,” he said, “but it would have been fun.” Williams said nobody ever talked money with him during his recruitment. Miller and Reggie’s mother, in particular, worked hard to keep agents and runners away from him. Some called Miller while Williams was still in high school, wanting to take Reggie’s parents to dinner. “I just wouldn’t allow that,” Miller said.

“My parents and Coach Miller did a great job of keeping that stuff at bay, and just letting me be a kid and play sports and have a job,” Williams said.

His recruiting advice for his own sons?

“Take all your visits and have fun,” he said. “Go where your heart goes. Go where you could see yourself always going back in 20 years when you no longer play there. Where would you be most proud to go, to be from?”

Oh, and there’s one more thing, stated only as Reggie can.

“If you are a top receiver in the state of Washington, have some self-pride, put a fence around the state and let some of the Dawgs from Washington stay home and be Dawgs,” he said. “We need some killers on the outside. If you’re short, if you’re big, whatever it is — we need some Dawgs outside, period. We got Bill Gates bread. Just like A&M got oil money, we got Amazon money too, baby. Shoutout to Starbucks.”

(Photo by Otto Greule Jr. / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57km1rbm9jbnxzfJFrZmlvX2eCcL7EoJ6inV2stq24yJqkrGWnlsCptc2gq6imXZ3CtLfInqpo

MoxVlog

The legend of Reggie Williams: How the best prep receiver in state history ended up at UW