By the time Antoine Brooks Jr. hit the soggy turf with the ball in his hands, he knew and so did his Maryland teammates, who quickly swarmed the junior defensive back. Brooks had ended what could have been Texas’s game-winning drive with a leaping interception to seal an upset win.
The Terrapins still needed to take a second snap from the victory formation, but on the sideline, Ellis McKennie, a high school teammate of Jordan McNair, had already begun to wave the red flag emblazoned with McNair’s No. 79.
“Yes, thank you,” Brooks’s mom, Keisha Staples, remembers thinking.