![]() ![]() Macen, a 5-10, 180-pound cornerback, didn’t break through at Serra until his junior year. They share a penchant for smack talk on the field, Maxzell said, and while Max and Marcelles enjoyed immediate success on the field at every level, Maxzell and Macen are underdogs who had to work for their achievements. Maxzell sees himself most in his middle son. "Like Shohei Ohtani, he's just good at everything for no reason." "Max was one of those people who was just good at everything," Macen said. Even some of Macen’s current teammates hailing from as far as Alabama remember watching Max’s high school highlights. He tackled fearlessly on defense despite his smaller frame and caught passes on offense. He was undersized, but even as a scrawny 5-foot-8 freshman, Max earned a starting job at Serra.įans packed the stands to watch him play, standing in anticipation each time he fielded a punt off the bounce, gasping each time he broke through a tackle on the return and cheering when he scored. Since scoring his first touchdown at 5 years old, Max took to football immediately. “The competitiveness really shaped us into who we are,” said Macen, who has three tackles in three games for the Sun Devils (1-2) this season.Īll three were groomed to be defensive backs, said Maxzell, who played the position at El Camino College and Nevada. Macen even bought a hoop to keep at home in Tempe, Ariz., so he can practice for his next trip home. Macen is battling with Marcelles to stay out of the basketball basement. "It’s me,” Max said, “don't let him tell you any different." H.O.R.S.E games in the garage on a mini basketball hoop get as boisterous as any football game. As they grew into top prospects, training sessions got so heated that the brothers wouldn’t talk for hours afterward if one dominated during a tough workout.Ĭompetition was, and still is, ingrained in everything for the Williams family. Maxzell trained his boys from a young age, lobbing footballs at Max in the front yard at age 4. “He’s rewriting his story,” Maxzell said. Now fans are approaching Maxzell at the Coliseum to tell him they still remember that kid from Serra who electrified audiences with special teams highlights and tough tackling. With Max’s mistakes on display for all to see at defensive back, fans dissected every disappointment on USC’s struggling defense. It was most obvious late in the season when he missed five tackles in the final four games, according to Pro Football Focus. He was tied for the team-lead in tackles, but Maxzell could tell his son didn’t have his normal level of explosiveness. Wanting to make a good first impression on the first-year coaching staff last season, Max fought through a sports hernia during spring camp and didn’t undergo surgery until the summer. It wasn’t just that he suffered his second season-ending knee injury the next year, robbing him of a key breakout opportunity, he's also had three defensive coordinators and three head coaches during his tumultuous career. The former Serra star is the healthiest he’s been since 2020, when he played in all six games of USC's pandemic-shortened season, starting three, with 22 tackles. He has nine tackles without missing a single attempt and grabbed USC’s first interception of the season against Stanford. The redshirt senior safety is USC’s top-ranked defender among players with more than 70 snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. Max is primed to make the most of the rare family reunion. John Bosco High, where he is a senior cornerback committed to USC. keeps a detailed chart of the football season, mapping each of his son's games: Max at USC Macen, now a redshirt junior, at Arizona State Marcelles at St. With three football-playing sons on different teams, it’s not often the whole family can be together during fall. “Us working out together, competing against each other and now we compete against each other on different teams. “It takes us back to childhood memories,” said Max, a redshirt senior at USC. After Max helped USC to a 42-25 win with four tackles, the brothers walked off the field shoulder-to-shoulder with their helmets in hand as their parents and younger brother met them for a long-awaited picture. Last year was the first time they faced off. Max sat out in 2021 because of his second torn ACL. They missed each other in 2020 while Macen redshirted. The timing hasn’t always been ideal for the siblings. "I was really hurt,” Macen said, “because there wasn’t anything I was looking forward to more than balling out with my brother."įive years later, the brothers get a final chance to share the field on the college level as Max’s fifth-ranked USC Trojans visit Macen’s Arizona State Sun Devils on Saturday at Mountain America Stadium. ![]()
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