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Football at Pittsburg High School dates back almost 100 years. It’s one of the Bay Area’s elite prep football programs. Make that one of Northern California’s elite programs.
It has produced NFL Hall of Famer John Henry Johnson, as well as other formidable players like Lionel Aldridge, Altie Taylor and Regan Upshaw. It’s the last California high school team north of Fresno to beat De La Salle.
The school’s football history runs so deep, it has its own Hall of Fame.
Meet Jerry Johnson.
He was the quarterback of Pittsburg’s 2019 team that went 11-2 and finished second to De La Salle in the North Coast Section Division I playoffs.
With Johnson behind center, the Pirates scored 36 points and averaged 404 yards per game. They won the Bay Valley Athletic League title, ended the season ranked fourth in this publication’s Top 25, handed No. 5 Liberty its only two losses and beat eighth-ranked Wilcox.
The 6-foot-3, 170-pounder threw for 2,971 yards and 34 touchdowns, both Pittsburg single-season records. He had a 110.9 quarterback rating.
Those achievements were enough to earn Johnson the Bay Area Preps HQ’s offensive player of the year for 2019.
Johnson had plenty of help, and he will gladly tell you that. Wideouts Brian Andre Pierce Jr., Johnny Blackmon III, James Battle III and freshman Rashid Williams were a dangerous receiving corps.
“Each receiver had different capabilities for getting open,” Johnson said.
Avant Muldrow was a multi-dimensional back who ran for 1,096 yards and caught 40 passes for 559 yards. The offensive line had three all-leaguers in Samiuela Fonongaloa, Mark Hutchinson and Ryan Lange.
The Pirates also had an excellent backup quarterback in Santino Chavez. The two seniors waged a fierce battle for the starting job. It wasn’t until the week of the season-opener at St. Mary’s-Stockton that coach Vic Galli picked Johnson to start.
“We didn’t know who was going to start,” Johnson said. “I thought we were going to switch off during the game. Then I got on a roll and he kept me in there.”
Said Galli, “Jerry had a little bit of an edge, but we went into the game expecting both to play. But Jerry had the hot hand. He seized the opportunity and played big.”
Johnson passed for 368 yards and six touchdowns in Pittsburg’s 42-35 win.
But this isn’t a fairy tale where Johnson kept rolling and never looked back. He struggled over the next three games, connecting on only 28 of 58 passes for 428 yards. Chavez relieved in all three.
Then came the battle against Wilcox.
Pittsburg trailed 31-14 with 11:54 left in the fourth quarter. Over the next 5:38, the Pirates scored twice to cut the lead to 31-28. Johnson threw a 12-yard pass to Pierce for one score and ran 10 yards for another.
The winning drive began with 2:52 remaining and Pittsburg at its own 30. Johnson went 7-for-7 passing on the 10-play drive, the last one to Pierce from the 5 for the winning score with 25.8 seconds showing on the clock.
Pittsburg won 35-31.
“That comeback against Wilcox was pretty good,” Galli said. “We knew we had found ourselves a quarterback.”
Johnson called it his breakout game.
“It took me a while to get comfortable,” Johnson said of being a starting quarterback.
In the Wilcox game, he found his comfort zone.
Johnson wasn’t entirely new to starting in 2019. He was the No. 1 quarterback on the junior varsity as a sophomore, then played a backup role on the varsity in 2018, appearing in six contests.
“As a sophomore, he was a skinny kid. He wasn’t strong,” Galli said. “Then he started growing into his body. We saw some flashes, he had some good moments as a junior. And Jerry kept getting stronger. He did a good in the weight room. He put velocity on the ball. He became more accurate. He’s got a good arm, he’s pretty cool under pressure and the team has confidence in him.”
Johnson connected on 24 of 37 passes for 305 yards and four touchdowns in the win against Wilcox. He had three more games of 300-plus passing yards after that, including a 350-yard, three-touchdown performance in a 21-14 NCS semifinal win over Liberty.
That game, followed by a nearly 250-yard passing performance in a loss to De La Salle in the NCS final, was the clincher for the top offensive player.
Down the road, it might be one of the achievements during the 2019 season that earns Johnson a plaque in the Pittsburg football Hall of Fame.