Provo • As the clock ran down on the final seconds of BYU’s 28-24 win over Notre Dame, Evan Johnson frantically looked for his man.

The target was Fighting Irish top receiver Jaden Greathouse, who had a game-high eight catches for 125 yards. One more catch from the 8-yard line with 4 seconds left, and Notre Dame would keep its undefeated record intact against a top-10 opponent.

The two met in the end zone, hands clashing with some occasional tugging both directions. But no penalty came, no catch made, and Johnson held off the Irish’s last attempt before most of the sellout crowd of 65,179 flooded the field at LaVell Edwards Stadium.

But this isn’t about Johnson or the Cougars’ victory. Because seconds later, another BYU defensive back was running up to Greathouse.

Matthias Leach found the Fighting Irish star in the corner of the end zone. The third-year sophomore extended a hand, helped pull him to his feet and whispered in his ear.

At that moment, with 60,000-plus fans hailing one of the biggest home wins in BYU history, Leach essentially wanted to apologize.

You see, a few plays earlier, Leach said he got caught up in the moment. The 6-foot-3 safety-turned-cornerback stood over Greathouse after breaking up a pass and did something he regretted.

He boasted.

Leach wanted Greathouse to know that wasn’t who he was, and that Notre Dame had played an incredible game with Greathouse and quarterback CJ Carr at the center of it.

“In that very moment, I could’ve taken the moment to talk mess and let it go,” Leach told The Salt Lake Tribune. “But we’ve been on that side of the ball before, with [a 17-14 loss to Kansas in 2024], and it’s not a good feeling.

“We love to compete at the highest level possible,” he added. “While the game’s going on, I might not like you. But at the end of the game, football brings everyone together.”

ESPN cameras caught the interaction, and the clip had gone viral by Sunday morning. It was a moment of sportsmanship, caught amid the Cougars’ biggest win in a generation.

But the fact that Leach was on the field at the time may be an even bigger story. The once-unheralded recruit who knew nothing about BYU before initial contact from former defensive coordinator Jay Hill hasn’t been a star on the team.

But with the game on the line, Leach was available, present and ready to make plays, but also teach a lesson about sportsmanship he’s learned since his days under former coach Keith Houston at Chisholm Trail High School in Fort Worth, Texas.

“You beat them at the highest level,” he said, echoing Houston, “but you also help them up. Then they look at you crazy.”

Right place, right time

In plenty of ways, Leach probably shouldn’t have been on the field in the biggest game of the season.

Leach played sparingly in his first two seasons on campus. He redshirted in 2024, and then played in just one game last year while moonlighting on the scout-team defense as the Cougars went 12-2.

He’s had more opportunities this season, highlighted by four tackles, a pass defended and his first career interception in BYU’s 63-7 season-opening win over Utah Tech, in a limited role.

But he was needed against Notre Dame.

When defensive coordinator Kelly Poppinga and cornerbacks coach Lewis Walker turned to him due to injuries in the second half Saturday, he didn’t have time to consider the magnitude of the moment, review his assignments or do more than lightly jog onto the field.

“Man, I couldn’t think,” he quipped, recalling the confidence he received from close friends and corners Evan Johnson and Tre Alexander before he notched two tackles, a pass breakup and a pass defended in the win.

“Me, Ev and Tre, we put in a lot of work over the season,” he added. “When my name was called, it wasn’t like anything changed for them or for me. They know what I was capable of.”

His coaches did, too.

“For a guy who hasn’t played a lot of football to go in at that moment in one of the biggest games of the season,” Poppinga said, “and to be able to play the way he did — and make some big plays as well — I’m super proud of the way that he played, and showed that we have more depth at corner than we thought.”

Leach was in the right place at the right time to make the plays his team needed. In some ways, that’s a microcosm of his BYU career — one that almost never got started.

‘I didn’t know anything’

Every time then-BYU defensive coordinator Jay Hill called him while recruiting the former three-star recruit out of Fort Worth, Texas, he asked Leach if he had done his research on the school, the program, the affiliation with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and particularly the school’s strict honor code.

Each time after the first conversation, Leach responded in the affirmative.

Good thing, too.

Before Hill’s phone calls, which Leach said happened about once a month for 3-4 months, he didn’t know anything about the school.

“At first, I didn’t know anything,” he said. “I didn’t even know what BYU was; I didn’t know what a Mormon was, any of that — until Jay Hill told me to look up the honor code, look up what it means to be at BYU; it’s bigger than me when I get here.

“We’re going to play football at the highest level, but we’re also going to represent God at the highest level, as well.”

Leach is among the first generation of college students in his family, following his older brother. A three-time academic all-district selection at Chisholm Trail High School in Fort Worth, Texas, Leach always saw the game as a means to a degree.

That was something his father, Robert and mother, Tawana, impressed on him at a young age. The game will eventually end, but it could be a means to a better life.

“Growing up, I wasn’t in the best part of Texas,” said Leach, who speaks with frequent ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ before each statement. “So my dad kept me in sports to keep me out of doing other stuff.”

When Matthias was young, the family experienced homelessness for a time, living out of their car while he attended school.

He hardly knew, though.

“My mom is Superman,” Leach said. “There wasn’t a day that went by that I actually felt homeless.

“It was just like I was taking a nap in the car, then waking up and going back to school,” he added. “My mom worked her butt off, and she works really hard.”

Tawana went to work driving cement trucks, 18-wheelers, buses and all kinds of freight in the DFW metroplex to pull her family back up.

“In that moment, I never doubted we were going to get out of this,” Leach said. “I knew my mama had a plan. It just brought my family closer.”

When Hill finally extended a scholarship offer to play for the Cougars, Leach committed almost immediately.

Leach had talked to Texas State, Louisiana-Lafayette, Miami (Ohio) and Utah State, but after months of short calls, reminders to research the honor code, and then a quick ‘OK, great, love ya, bye’ from Hill, Leach knew where he wanted to be.

The chance to play big-time football in the Big 12 was one he didn’t want to pass up. Neither was the chance at a college education, he quickly added.

“It felt all too good to be true,” he said. “It felt like I wasn’t going to be here, like I wasn’t going to get the opportunity.

“But like everybody says, the love when you get here is like no other. You can’t go anywhere else in the country and feel the same way that you do.”

Sticking with it

Leach didn’t see the field in his first season in 2024, making his college debut in the first game of the 2025 season, a 69-0 rout of FCS Portland State.

It was the only game he played in, seeing most of his reps on the scout team.

But in an era of the NCAA transfer portal, Leach said he never thought of leaving BYU. He knows he could’ve found more playing time elsewhere, and maybe even more NIL money. But that’s not important to him, he says.

More important to Leach is commitment, an example of which he has in his own cornerback room. Leach credits Johnson above all for keeping him at BYU and even on track in his exercise science program.

“Evan Johnson is the reason that I’m [still] here,” he said. “He’s just a real dude. He waited his time. It doesn’t matter if you’re making plays now or later — when you’re now comes, it’s going to be now.”

Like Leach, Johnson committed to BYU without knowing much about the school or its sponsoring institution. The 6-foot native of Monterey, California, took a redshirt in 2022 and played in just four games as a freshman in 2023 before leading the team with five interceptions last year — tied for the most in the Big 12.

Leach hopes to follow a similar path.

“When I look at Ev and the hard work he’s put in, it shows up,” he said. “I could run and try to find other opportunities. Or I could fight.”

Fight — and then help an opponent up.