The best Charlotte high school football player in the past 40 years was football ‘anomaly’

CJ Leak said his younger brother, from a very young age, was an “anomaly.”

CJ Leak played football at South Mecklenburg and Independence in the late ‘90s. He became a heralded high school All-American who shocked the college football world by choosing Wake Forest, then a struggling ACC program, over Penn State and Notre Dame.

Growing up, CJ Leak said he always knew that his baby brother, Christopher Patrick Leak, might one day surpass all the records he was setting in Mecklenburg County, and that he might surpass all the attention he was getting, too.

Sweet 16 turns 40

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Charlotte Observer’s Sweet 16 poll, our high school preps staff spent months working to determine the best football players, coaches and teams of the era.

• The all-time best high school football players from Charlotte

• Charlotte's greatest high school football player was an 'anomaly'

• Who are the best players from outside Mecklenburg County?

• Which teams were the best of the Sweet 16 era? We make our picks

• COLUMN: In the past 40 years, what’s the greatest team I’ve seen? There are only two contenders

• These are the top high school Charlotte football coaches of the last 40 years

• ‘It’s just a fact’: He is the greatest Charlotte prep football coach in the past 40 years

But, it turns out, that was kind of the plan all along.

“Everything I did was just to make sure he knew how to do it, to be honest,” CJ Leak said. “Our dad (Curtis) played five years in the NFL and he came from obscurity. He was a track athlete playing semi-pro football, and he always taught me to look out for the next one. So I looked after Chris.”

So before Chris Leak became a national champion at Florida and arguably the best and most celebrated high school football player ever from Charlotte — and certainly the best of The Observer’s 40-year Sweet 16 era — he followed his older brother everywhere he went, doing everything that CJ did.

If CJ went to a 7-on-7 exposure camp, Chris tagged along. Ditto almost any practice, drill or college visit.

“The ball was too big for him back then,” said CJ Leak, now a college scout for the New Orleans Saints. “We had an NFL ball and Chris was like, ‘If I want to hang around, I’ve got to learn to throw this ball.’ And he grew these big ol’ hands and he used this wrist action to be able to spin it, and when he got older it was natural. He was a preview of the era you see now. So many guys can throw now because they start so young. When I was little, they didn’t throw the ball like that. Chris was an anomaly back then.

“He was ahead of his time that way.”

After going 5-5 as a freshman starter at Independence in 1999, Chris Leak lost one more game in high school and won three state championships, launching a dynasty that ultimately won 109 straight games and seven straight state championships. But that’s getting a little ahead of the story.

Even all these years later, when teams are passing on nearly every down and running hurry-up offenses to get more plays, Leak’s 15,593 career passing yards is still more than 2,000 ahead of any other N.C. quarterback in history, and his total ranks third in national history. Leak’s 185 career touchdown passes is still a state record and was the national standard for nine years. Leak’s scoring pass total still ranks second.

“When I started playing in ninth grade, I wanted to start all four years,” Chris Leak said, “and right before I went to play my first ninth-grade game, my dad asked me, ‘How good do you want to be?’ I said, ‘I want to be the best in the country.’ That’s what I told him.”

Today, at 38, Chris Leak admits he wasn’t sure how good he could be.

A legendary coach starts a legendary run

In July of 1999, Chris went to a summer camp at Wake Forest. This was just before his brother’s freshman year in Winston-Salem. Demon Deacons coach Jim Caldwell offered Chris Leak a scholarship. Chris was a few weeks away from his first day of high school.

He committed on the spot.

Back then, it was very unusual for a major college to offer an eighth-grader, and Leak’s story made headlines in national publications.

“I didn’t realize how big that was,” Leak said. “I think I realized when my dad showed me The Charlotte Observer article and my picture was in it and I’m like, ‘Oh wait, this is actually a really big deal.‘ That made me aware of how this is great exposure for you, but this comes with a price.”

As a freshman, Leak threw for 1,345 yards and 15 touchdowns, playing under a burden of expectation. He got media coverage that few NC freshman had ever received. Leak led a 5-5 Independence team that lost to West Charlotte 55-12 in its season finale in November of 1999. The Lions sacked Leak six times and he finished 10 of 27 for 83 yards.

The next season, Leak’s career would change when he hooked up with West Charlotte’s coach, Tom Knotts, who left the Lions to become coach of Leak’s team.

Knotts had won a state championship at West Charlotte in 1995 and taken the Lions and Charlotte’s Harding High School to three other finals appearances. Knotts arrived in Mint Hill saying he wanted Independence — which had never been to a state final — to quickly develop a championship mindset. Knotts was in a hurry, too. He was nearing the point where he could retire from teaching and told The Observer at the time that he had “three good years left coaching” in him.

Leak, Knotts and the Patriots faced a daunting schedule in the fall of 2000. Three of the team’s first six games were against state powers Anson County, Butler and Crest.

“Oh, he’ll be fine down there,” Asheville Reynolds coach Bobby Poss told The Observer that fall. “Before [Knotts] is through, they’ll make a movie out of it. Remember ‘Independence Day?’ It’ll be Independence Day II when he’s done.”

Poss had no idea how right he would turn out to be.

A dynasty, and a QB legend, begin

After beating North Mecklenburg in its opener, Independence went to play at Boiling Springs’ Crest High School in September of 2000. Crest was No. 2 in The Observer’s Sweet 16 poll. Independence was No. 7 and, shouldering the weight of his scholarship offers and expectations, Leak was a little nervous.

Crest, playing at home, went up 34-17 before Leak and the Patriots began to rally. Leak hit receiver Mario Raley for a score. Independence’s Justin Barnette ran for a score. And down 34-31 late in the game, Leak threw a pass toward Brad Hinton that might have won it. The referees said Hinton trapped the ball in the end zone. Knotts swears Hinton caught it.

“That throw against Crest could’ve won it,” Leak said. “I remember the ball being thrown with not enough height on it. They said he trapped it. I didn’t have clear vision of it, but I remember that play in its totality. After that I practiced that same scenario, over and over again, to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.”

Independence lost by three, but that was the last game Leak ever would lose in high school. In fact, he rarely came close to losing.

He credits the Crest game in 2000 for a lot of what came after.

“That game gave me the confidence that I could play at a high level,” he said. “We were down and everybody knows Crest is a hostile environment. Crest is still Crest. We showed resilience. Plays I made in that game I didn’t know I could make, or didn’t have the confidence that I could make those plays until that game.”

Everything became a blur after that.

Under Leak, Independence won 46 straight games. One state title became two. Two became three. After his sophomore and junior seasons, Leak won some type of national player of the year award in his age group.

After his senior season, Leak was named national player of the year or national offensive player of the year by USA Today, Parade magazine, the US Army All-American Bowl, the Charlotte Touchdown Club, the Columbus (Ohio) Touchdown Club, and the Atlanta Touchdown Club.

Leak won N.C. Gatorade player of the year for a third straight season. Knotts stayed at Independence for several more years, ultimately winning six state titles before leaving for South Carolina, where he won eight more at Dutch Fork High School near Columbia.

Knotts has coached many great players, but said he’s never had one like Chris Leak.

“He was special,” Knotts said of Leak. “The velocity he had on the ball, the touch, the feel for the long ball. Chris would throw it as far as he needed to. I swear once he threw a comeback to Mario Raley right in front of me and that ball was whistling as it came to him. It was just amazing.”

A national champion and a whole lot of rings

After high school, Leak enrolled at Florida. After his first season, he made the SEC All-Freshman Team and the Rivals.com Freshman All-America team.

Leak went on to start 47 of 51 games in Gainesville, and he led the Gators to the 2007 BCS National Championship, when he was named most valuable player. His 88 career touchdown passes is second most in Florida history.

But after his championship season, and an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Leak measured an eighth of an inch short of six feet at the NFL combine at a time when the league was enamored with 6-4 and 6-5 quarterbacks. He went undrafted and signed with the Bears. Leak played in one preseason game, completing 11 of 16 passes for 88 yards and a touchdown, but was cut in September 2007.

Leak would eventually land in the Canadian Football League, where he was part of a Montreal team that won two Grey Cup championships.

But by 2011, he said, his body began to break down, particularly a right throwing arm shoulder injury he’d suffered during his sophomore year at Florida playing against Florida State. Leak said he re-injured the shoulder playing Alabama his junior year.

So his playing days were done. Leak dabbled in coaching after that, even returning to Florida as an assistant coach. Today, he runs the Air Strike Passing Academy in Orlando, which requires him to travel the state working with young quarterbacks and advising high school staffs. Rivals.com ranks one of Leak’s top clients, 2026 prospect Sabby Meassick, as a five-star recruit. Florida offered Meassick in eighth grade.

“I had a conversation with (Super Bowl-winning coach turned NBC commentator) Tony Dungy years ago, and he said so much of [making the NFL] is about timing,” Leak said. “The time that you come out matters so much. So when I see (smaller) guys like Kyler Murray, Bryce Young, I think about guys like myself or Drew Brees, who had a great career. But people were mostly looking for 6-5 guys when I came out. It’s a different time now, and I definitely believe with the way offenses are now, with so much shotgun and what quarterbacks are expected to do — read and throw accurately and be no-huddle — I can definitely see myself succeeding in this era. It’s about throwing the football now, and that was my gift.”

Never forgetting high school

Chris Leak doesn’t give many interviews these days. He wasn’t part of the recent Netflix special about the Gators. But when he was asked to talk about his high school days, and his amazing high school records, he spoke for more than an hour.

He can remember most of his teammates and can describe individual plays from individual games with amazing clarity. Ditto for his games at Florida.

“Being one of the all-time leading passers at Florida, that means a lot,” he said. “My shoulder wasn’t healthy (after my sophomore year) and we were the top offense in the SEC. That means as much to me as all the records at Independence, dealing with all the injuries and physicality in the SEC. It takes a lot to be a four-year starter. And it took a lot to do in high school, too.”

His older brother, CJ, said Chris knew “how to be presidential as a quarterback.”

“Chris is so light-hearted and good natured,” CJ Leak said, “but he knows how to flip the switch. It’s what he’s been around. When we were younger, my dad always had a lot of old NFL guys coming around. Dad and (former Steelers great) Donnie Shell had been teammates in Pittsburgh. Chris and I would hear the stories, learn the lessons. And dad always had us on college campuses. We went to Nebraska and (Chris) was listening to Tom Osborne or Mack Brown at UNC.

“So when it’s time to interview, he knows how to play the part. Away from that? He was just your average goofy kid who played video games. People think he’s quiet. But he was always the little brother who learned how to fit in and be in the room. He grew up fast and was always older for his age. And what he did in high school, man? It just took off. There was just a level of dominance they had with it. Other teams would go into the games knowing they were beat.”

Chris Leak remembers those days well. The one time “anomaly” said he’ll never forget them.

“Not everybody sees the work done away from the lights, all the time I would spend on the practice field with my dad when everybody was gone,” Chris Leak said. “All those things equated to those final stats. Fifty years from now, nobody will remember, but you can look back on it yourself and say, ‘You know what? We did pretty good. We were a pretty good team.’

“Although my name is beside (the records), I think about the entire offense when I see the 15,000 yards. We all grew up together, and that made those state championship games special, where we got to take those pictures together. Those things are priceless. Those things stay with you forever.”

The Chris Leak file

NC INDIVIDUAL RECORDS

▪ Career passing yards: 15,593 (more than 2,000 yards ahead of No. 2 Sam Howell of Sun Valley. Leak’s yardage is third-most in NFHS national history)

▪ Career passing touchdowns: 185 (more than 30 ahead of No. 2 Conner Mitch of Wakefield. Leak’s touchdowns are second-most in national history)

▪ Career passing attempts: 1,745 (ranks third in national history)

▪ Career passing completions: 1,013 (ranks fifth in national history)

▪ Season passing attempts: 584 (2002, senior year)

▪ Season passing completions: 336 (2002, senior year)

OTHER MARKS

▪ Leak had 5,193 yards passing in 2002 as a senior (currently ranks third; was a state record stood for 12 years).

▪ Leak’s 4,592 yards in 2000 as a sophomore ranks No. 8 in state history. His 4,521 as a junior in 2001 ranks ninth. No other NC quarterback in history appears in the top 10 more than once.

▪ Leak threw for 585 yards against North Mecklenburg during his senior year. That record stood for eight years. It now ranks No. 8.

▪ Leak holds three of the top 10 spots for touchdown passes in a season (64 in 2002, 57 in 2001, 51 in 2000). He appears twice in top 10 for most touchdown passes in a game (eight in 2002 and seven in 2000)

▪ Leak’s career record at Independence is 51-6, including 45-1 his final three seasons with three state titles.

▪ Note: Leak’s records are NCHSAA public school marks recognized by the National Federation of High Schools.