Prep football: Johnson wins Greek odyssey of a game and sends 3 GSL teams to playoffs

Get comfortable. Make sure you’ve gone to the bathroom recently. Maybe grab a light snack. We might be here a while.

There’s a lot to talk about from Johnson’s wild 48-46 win over Natomas on Friday night. There’s Natomas receiver Mekhei Byrd, who led his team in both rushing and receiving yards. There’s Johnson coach Alex Gomes-Coelho going for it on fourth and 10 from his own 6-yard line, and later going for it on fourth and 16, both of which led to touchdowns. There’s a defensive lineman who caught the first interception of his life, then ended the game with a fumble recovery.

It was an emotional whirlwind because they were playing for the Greater Sacramento League title. A win would have given Natomas sole possession of the championship and sent them alone to the playoffs. Instead, Johnson stamped its playoff passport and also earned Foothill a share of the league title. All three teams will go to the playoffs.

Not that it was any consolation to Natomas, a likely Division V team when the playoffs start Friday. After the game, the Nighthawks sideline was crammed with emotional kids and parents trying to coach them up.

In coach Spencer Hagan’s third season, the program has come a long way from league doormat. His team was looking to stamp its dominance on the GSL and settle an old score Friday night. The Nighthawks trailed 20-0 and 42-20 and twice got within a score of taking the lead. It wasn’t to be.

“This meant so much to us because we lost them last year by three points,” Hagan said. “And so this one, it just hurts me, you know, but they have a fantastic program. A shout out to them. We just got to learn from our mistakes.”

If you’re looking to simplify the story – and 300 words into this Greek odyssey of a football game, who could blame you for that? – Natomas had too many turnovers and penalties and Johnson struggled to tackle Byrd and Natomas’ inside running attack.

Natomas’ final miscue came with 40 seconds left in the game. Natomas had the ball at the Johnson 22-yard line and no timeouts when backup quarterback – starter Michael Hendricks was injured in the first half – fumbled the snap and Nason Godinez pounced on it to seal Johnson’s win.

Or mostly seal the win. The Warriors haven’t practiced the victory formation, so coaches were shouting instructions to the quarterback on how to take a knee from the shotgun in the closing seconds.

Asked to recount his game-finishing recovery, Godinez could only say that he happened to notice the ball flopping around on the ground while he was trying to get to the quarterback. How’d it get there? Good question.

“Honestly, I’m a bit confused at that point,” he said. “All my instincts turned to the ball on the ground and I dived for it. And you know, I’m happy right now.”

He had other reasons to be happy. The athletic lineman moved from London to the Sacramento area last year, in part because it would allow him to play football with other Americans. In his first year with Johnson, he got a concussion on his fourth game rep and missed the rest of the season. After the game Friday, his family took video of him getting interviewed by a reporter as his teams slapped hands and hugged around him.

“It makes me so happy,” he said. “I feel the most joy. I feel happy playing with these guys. It’s my family and all that hard work and all the running. We’re doing all that hard work. All those drills we’ve done. It feels like it’s starting to pay off.”

All that and we really haven’t talked about the game yet. Maybe top off the coffee or get some tea. We have lots more to talk about.

Johnson’s quick-strike offense blew open the game in the first 13 minutes. Quarterback Marino Fragata hit Jhayson Fowler on a little curl pattern on the first play of the game. Fowler turned, shed his defender and went 74 yards for a touchdown. Fragata had 148 yards passing on his first three throws of the game. He had 270 at the half, two touchdown throws and a nice 19-yard touchdown run. He finished with 458 yards passing and five touchdown throws.

The gaudy numbers are thanks to speedy, resilient receivers like Fowler and James Hunter, who came back from a pair of first-half drops to haul in a beautiful 50-yard bomb from Fragata in the second half. It’s all part of coach Alex Gomes-Coelho’s all-gas, no-brake offense. Johnson literally does not have a punter.

A college recruiter watching the game asked a nearby reporter “Are they seriously going for this?” when Johnson faced fourth and 10 from their own 6-yard line.

Yep. And they made it, then later scored on the drive. There’s a reason behind the seeming madness.

“I think we come out on top of it more often than not because we complete 60-some-odd percent of our passes for like 20 yards of clip, so I’ve got four chances to complete one pass,” he said.

And still, Natomas kept finding ways to storm back into the game. With Johnson leading 42-20, Byrd, Natomas’ top receiver, took a handoff and zipped through the Johnson defense for a 53-yard touchdown with 10:14 left to play.

Then the Nighthawks recovered the onside kick, Byrd galloped 35 yards on the first play and teammate Paul Lanier IV went the final 9 yards for a touchdown with 9:46 remaining. Johnson scored again, but Natomas scored two touchdowns in the final six minutes. On the last, an 18-yard reception by Byrd with 2:45 left, the Nighthawks came up about a foot short on the two-point conversion.

And it still wasn’t over. The Natomas defense stripped the ball from Johnson’s Fowler on a run play with 1:38 left to get the ball back at the 50-yard line. The Nighthawks wouldn’t give up and Byrd showed why colleges are looking at his play.

“Mekhei Byrd is one of the best players in Sacramento and he played his heart out tonight. I was so proud of him,” Hagan said. “Everybody was making plays and even on defense I mean, we had that last strip fumble. … And so our guys just literally gave everything that they had. And as much as I always want to win, one thing that we try to teach our guys is how to overcome adversity, and we had so much adversity tonight. It was insane and they kept overcoming and overcoming that’s why this hurts so much because we were that close.”

And we still haven’t gotten to the best part.

Both teams, and an upstart Foothill team, too, get to play again Friday in the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs. Because of its enrollment numbers, Johnson will be in Division I, likely as a low seed.

Gomes-Coelho shakes his head a bit about his team being forced to play with powerhouse programs like Folsom. His school’s enrollment of about 2,500 kids includes roughly 300 kids who never show up to the school, he says, and another 500 kids that attend small magnet programs and never step foot on campus, nor play football.

Whatever.

Godinez, the lineman with an interception and fumble recovery, and the rest of the Warriors don’t really care. Another game means another puncher’s chance to win a game with their wild offense.

“I would like to say this team is dangerous for a playoff team,” Godinez said. “We can put points up on that board. And the other teams are gonna have to watch out for us.”