MONROEVILLE, Pa. – Negotiate your way around the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania, past the Fort Pitt Tunnel heading east on Interstate 376 and through those two lanes of traffic that lie buried underneath Mount Washington.
On the other side, you’ll meet the face of downtown Pittsburgh as you glide over the Monongahela River on a drive across the Fort Pitt Bridge. Veer left and you’ll pass the Ohio and the Allegheny, the city’s other two interconnecting rivers, to get an up-close look at Heinz Field.
Veer right, though, bending with the curve of the Monongahela, and give yourself about 25-30 minutes to weave through the rush-hour traffic, where you’ll eventually find yourself at the suburban high school home of Derrick Davis Jr., this city’s best prep football player and the young man that every powerhouse program in the country – Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia, Alabama, etc. – is dying to get their hands on to lock down the back end of a national championship defense.
Davis, a kid who’s never looked like a kid, was born and raised in the suburb of Monroeville. In a few years, hundreds of thousands of people will find out how special he is and a few years after that, perhaps millions if he’s able to parlay a successful collegiate career into a couple NFL contracts.
But Monroeville? That’s where people have known for years that he was always different. Always special. And that city down the block? That’s where those assertions were affirmed on one of the biggest stages possible, his star being cemented on the 20-yard line of Pittsburgh’s football mecca.
For years, people knew Davis was gifted and at times unstoppable, that much already becoming clear at 5 years old, when Davis’ first sports memories were of him tackling poor kids in flag football and opposing parents yelling, “‘Tell him to stop tackling my child! That’s a flag!’”
Eventually, he had to stop tackling those kids because he kept getting bigger and bigger, and Venneasha and Derrick Davis Sr. were forced to answer questions of whether their child was actually a child.
“At track meets, I would run with my age group, and parents would go to my parents and say, ‘He’s not 10. He’s 12. Where’s his birth certificate?’”
Davis recalls all of these memories years later, sitting across from head coach Don Holl in his office at Gateway High School, where Davis has become America’s second-ranked junior safety prospect and a consensus top-50 overall recruit.
The 6-foot-1, 195-pounder is one of the most awe-dropping and jaw-inspiring players Holl has coached in his 30 years in the sport, with that praise and those rankings being born from the physicality Davis has showcased in three seasons for the Gators – a hard-nosed nastiness that makes him a fit to work inside the box on defense for the Buckeyes or Bulldogs. They’re also born from a 40-yard dash time that he’s worked down to 4.49, a closing speed that allows him to roam freely at safety and man-cover receivers on the outside and running backs in the slot, a versatility making him perfect for the Tigers or Tide.
He had similar traits as a youth player, and his persona grew in elementary and middle school in the area when Holl first came to Gateway when Davis was an eighth-grader. He heard about Davis’ prowess, but how often do coaches hear about “the next big thing” only for everyone to catch up to them when they come to high school?
“You see a big guy who no one can tackle ‘cause he’s the biggest guy, but he doesn’t grow up. He levels out,” Holl says. “Derrick was the special kind of kid who didn’t level off.”
Holl and Gateway defensive coordinator Mortty Ivy looked at each other when they first saw Davis on the field as a freshman and said to each other, “He looks like a junior.”
That first season, Davis was starting on defense, but an injury to a teammate placed Davis into the starting role at running back, and the persona that had been building for years in the area started showing itself. He became a key factor down the stretch of the season for the Gators, leading them to an 11-1 record and the moment that showed everyone he was for real.
It may look like just a first-round playoff game on a MaxPreps bracket, but the WPIAL (Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League) championship game means a tremendous deal to those in the state.
There’s a long, convoluted and rich history with those games themselves, but we’ll boil it down to this: There are currently six high school classifications in the state (1A-6A), and the WPIAL title game crowns the district champion. It’s a game juiced with lifelong bragging rights and is nearly on par with winning a state title in terms of importance, and the setting for the game does it justice – since the 1980s, four of the six games each year have been played at the home of the Steelers, either at now-defunct Three Rivers Stadium or Heinz Field.
In 2017, Davis’ freshman year, the game served as a rematch against Gateway’s rival team (Penn-Trafford) that had dealt the Gators their only loss that season. Davis was out for revenge. He got it.
Davis had made plays all year, but his breakout game came on the biggest possible spotlight for a player in the western part of the state. On the rain-soaked natural grass of Heinz Field, where two WPIAL games had already been played that day, Davis found his footing to rack up more than 100 combined rushing and receiving yards, a touchdown and an interception earlier in the game.
That set up a 21-16 lead in the final minutes as Penn-Trafford drove the field for what had to feel like the setup of another heartbreaking ending for Gateway. The program had not won a coveted WPIAL title in more than three decades, reaching Heinz Field four times since 1986 but losing three of them by one possession.
With the clock ticking to less than a minute left, Penn-Trafford drove inside Gateway’s 30-yard line when Davis showed off his ability as an outside linebacker, blitzing off the edge to swallow up the quarterback.
Two plays later, the Warriors lined up on the right hash in shotgun, with Davis on an island man-covering a slot receiver on the far side of the field. First, Davis showed his physicality with a press at the line, but his man created separation (Davis had been expecting him to run a curl route), going across the field on a drag route as the quarterback stepped up and rolled to his right before firing to Davis’ man on the drag.
Even though he had gotten off-balance and trailed his man by at least three yards, Davis closed in on the receiver’s back hip, undercut the route and stepped through for an interception, making the biggest play at Gateway in more than 30 years to clinch a historic championship with 19 seconds remaining.
Down to the dramatic rain flowing down and the fans exploding in unison for the local live TV crew to capture, there’s no overselling how big that moment and that game were for Davis’ program.
“It was the classic coming-out game,” Holl says. “Everybody had known him or seen him the last half of the year, like ‘Who’s that kid?’ It was before that when Pitt offered him a couple games earlier before the playoffs, and then West Virginia and Penn State followed right after. And then it was the postseason, and everyone was like, ‘Who’s this guy?’ And then he just went and did that stuff on the biggest stage at only 15 (years old).
“We won the championship because of that play. That sealed it. It was awesome. ... If someone wants a (film) cutup of something, I might be trying to find an old clip for a coach or something, and once in a great while, I’ll go watch that last play one more time. It’s really cool.”
Almost everyone in the Gateway program already knew what they had in Davis, but that moment served as the ultimate breakout. That’s when Davis became a true star, and all of the things that have happened since that clutch play have done nothing but add to it. His performances at offseason camps have impressed, his recruiting rankings have risen, his individual play has gotten better and a massive amount of attention has come his way.
Gateway has seen several players move onto the NFL and Power 5 programs, recently to Penn State and Syracuse. But Davis – who led the Gators to a 12-0 regular season in 2018 and a second WPIAL title in 2019 – has already put together a career that’s placing him in contention for the school’s best-ever player.
A lot has changed since that 2017 season and that play. During all this time, what hasn’t changed is Davis himself.
Holl quotes an old saying, “Rank has its privileges but rank has its responsibilities.” Davis has epitomized that quote, and a lot of that is because of who’s around him. Davis Sr., a former quarterback and safety at Cleveland’s Glenville High School, instills the driving force behind young Derrick setting his goals high on the field. Venneasha, a strong and organized middle school teacher, instills discipline and structure.
“My dad just wants me to be better than him, and I just want to be better than him,” Davis said. “My mom, honestly, she could care less about sports. As long as your grades are good, she doesn’t care.”
Holl adds further structure as a former Navy football player, and Davis’ younger sisters Gianna and Brielle offer even more support and further fuel his competitiveness at home – even if it’s just competing to see who has the best grades.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never had that red carpet of guys roll through any place I’ve been to see a guy.”– Gateway head coach Don Holl on the attention received by derrick davis jr.
That entire circle – the “Circle of Care,” his father calls it – provides the backbone of why Davis Jr. has been able to stay level-headed, humble and, maybe just as importantly, likable.
“People aren’t shy about telling you about your players when you’re a football coach,” Holl said. “I hear things from everybody when any of our guys steps out of line. I’ve never had any talk to me in a negative way in this building or anywhere else.
“If he’s acting like a fool, or just being arrogant or being some kind of way, I’m gonna hear that from everybody. And you’re gonna have a lot of people not rooting for him. I think that’s the coolest part. He was the same way in elementary and middle school as he is here, and all those people are rooting for him.”
All of who Davis is, the character meshed with the ability, led to times like a two-day period in January that might as well have been called Famous Coach Appreciation Day at Gateway, when a carousel of coaches made the rounds at the school.
Ryan Day, Dabo Swinney, James Franklin, Jim Harbaugh, Paul Chryst. It didn’t quite happen like this, but it’s fun to picture it as so – essentially each one waited outside the school for the other to leave and then walked inside once it was their turn. One after the other like a merry-go-round, each program made sure that Davis knew how high of a priority he was for them by sending the head coach to see him during the brief contact period.
In a small conference room, Davis and Holl met with four of the five coaches (Holl was not there for Day’s appearance because of a scheduling conflict, but don’t read too much into that if you’re a Buckeye fan), as Gateway’s head principal, vice principal, freshman principal, superintendent, others who work with the superintendent – OK, basically the entire school board – and even a coach from rival Penn-Trafford who works at Gateway, came in to meet the coaches and get their pictures taken with them.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never had that red carpet of guys roll through any place I’ve been to see a guy,” Holl said.
And then each of those coaches drove off. Perhaps off to see another safety recruit who’s below Davis’ caliber. Perhaps back from where they came.
Soon enough, Davis will have to decide which coach he wants to follow. He’s not expecting to make a commitment until after his senior season, but eventually he has to decide which path to travel.
He might follow Franklin to Happy Valley, Swinney to South Carolina or Harbaugh to Ann Arbor.
Or maybe he trails Day to Columbus. If he does, he’ll pass the Steelers' stadium, he’ll go over that bridge, and he’ll drive through that tunnel, onto the other side where a bright future awaits. And who knows? If things go right, maybe he ends up right back where it all became real, making legacy-defining plays in the red zone of Heinz Field.
