A passing fancy
Whitman’s Dilweg was one of all-time great county QBs
Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005
E-Mail This Article  Click here to enlarge this photo Photo courtesty of Anthony Dilweg
Former Whitman star Anthony Dilweg, a 1984 graduate, is one of the few Montgomery County quarterbacks to throw for 2,000 yards in 10 games. He went on to win the 1988 Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year award at Duke University and play two years for the Green Bay Packers.
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When Sherwood High quarterback Deontay Twyman burst onto the scene last fall, the precocious sophomore dropped jaws all around Montgomery County with his astounding season. In 10 games, he threw for 2,143 yards and 18 touchdowns, helping the Warriors to a 7-3 record.
Eclipsing the 2,000-yard plateau is quite a feat for any high-school quarterback, certainly in run-happy Maryland. But Twyman’s performance did more than just induce awe. It provoked an interesting question: When was the last time a Montgomery County quarterback passed for so much yardage in the regular season?
Without any official record-keeping available from the county or state athletic associations, no search can be 100-percent accurate. But conversations with numerous longtime county coaching veterans repeatedly produced one name: Anthony Dilweg.
His was a story of implausible success, odds-smashing at its finest, a determined kid from Bethesda who hurdled consistent impediments to produce not only an amazing season, but a fantastic career. Although his 1983 season at Whitman is now wrapped in the dust of antiquity, this much remains clear: Dilweg’s performance 22 years ago marked one of the greatest single-season efforts in county history, and he has been riding a subsequent wave of success, on and off the gridiron, ever since.
A second chance
‘‘You’re done,” the doctor told Dilweg in August of 1982.
Dilweg was entering his senior year at Whitman, vying in preseason practice for the starting quarterback job, a position he had not been able to secure at Episcopal (Va.) as a sophomore or at Whitman as a junior. He had punted both years — quite well actually — and played backup quarterback, throwing ‘‘no more than 10 passes” in two seasons.
But this was his year. That is, until the first preseason scrimmage against Magruder, when his left knee was ravaged, ligaments torn and severed. His season was over. Doctor’s prognosis: No more football, ever.
But what do doctors know?
By the spring semester, Dilweg had nursed his knee back to the point where he felt he could play again. His father, Bob, petitioned the Montgomery County Board of Education to grant his son an extra year of athletic eligibility. Because Anthony had only two years of varsity football experience and wouldn’t turn 19 until March of 1984, satisfying county age stipulations for athletic involvement, the board granted the request, effectively giving him a medical redshirt.
Bob Dilweg admits to thinking about the cost of Anthony’s college tuition without an athletic scholarship at the time.
‘‘I had three kids in college, and I said, ‘Wow, I’m going to have to pay for another,’” Bob said.
Anthony dropped English for the 1983 spring semester to remain eligible as a student and took a full course load as a fifth-year senior in 1983-84. Former Whitman coach Rich Cameron, who coached the Vikings from 1974 to ’92, was thrilled to have him back. Cameron had run the option for years, taking Whitman to the 1978 state playoffs with wishbone quarterback Tim Agee. But Cameron was innovative and flexible, and when he saw what Dilweg offered, he thought one thing: run-and-shoot.
‘‘To give you an idea of his arm strength,” Cameron said, remembering Dilweg’s trips to the football field in 1982 while injured, ‘‘he could stand on one leg and throw the ball from one side of the field to another.”
With only backup experience and a bum knee on his quarterbacking résumé, Dilweg led the Vikings into the 1983 season opener against Bob Milloy’s Springbrook squad and unloaded on it, throwing four touchdowns in the Whitman win. USA Today listed Dilweg’s effort in its national top performances of the week. Milloy, who had won three straight state titles at Springbrook in 1979-81, was quoted in the papers as marveling, ‘‘We were playing a college quarterback.”
By the time the season was over, Dilweg had led the Vikings to a 7-3 record with some incredible numbers: 2,293 yards, 24 touchdowns (both school records) and 15 interceptions. He was named a USA Today honorable mention All-American and the D.C. Touchdown Club’s high-school player of the year. College recruiters across the nation dialed his number.
‘‘A lot of it had to do with Rich Cameron changing the offense,” said Dilweg, who now lives in Chapel Hill, N.C. ‘‘We ran the option and then switched to the run-and-shoot. Andy Moore [who later walked on at James Madison] was my receiver, and he caught for over 1,000 yards. He was probably in the mid-40s in catches. It makes a big difference.”
Dilweg is being modest. In a run-dominated county, the kid was an epiphany. In fact, by the end of the season, as the Whitman-Churchill rivalry game neared, legendary former Churchill coach Fred Shepherd went to great lengths to stop Dilweg. A week prior to the game, he called the University of Maryland coaching staff — the head coach was Bobby Ross, and Ralph Friedgen was an assistant — and asked them for help. With an assortment of clever defensive schemes, the Bulldogs intercepted Dilweg six times, according to Shepherd, in a rout. But it took extraordinary steps to stymie the overnight star.
‘‘Back then, we were all run, run, run, run and throw the ball a little bit,” Shepherd said. ‘‘Over 2,000 yards? I don’t think there were too many people who threw the ball that much back then. He was a great quarterback.”
Cameron went a step further: ‘‘There hasn’t been a better quarterback in the county to my recollection.”
All in the family
Was Dilweg’s athleticism (he also played baseball and basketball at Whitman) in the genes? It would be hard to argue no. Check out this family tree.
Dilweg’s paternal grandfather, LaVern Dilweg, was a football institution in the Midwest. Born in Milwaukee in 1903, LaVern first played pro ball, while finishing law school at Marquette, in 1926 for the Milwaukee Badgers, which folded later that year. From 1927 to ’34, he suited up for the Green Bay Packers after turning down Chicago Bears’ Hall of Fame coach George Halas. Dilweg caught forward passes before they were en vogue, played defensive end and helped the Packers win three straight championships from 1929 to ’31. He was an all-league pick in 1931 and was voted into the Packers Hall of Fame in 1970, while also being named to the NFL’s all-decade team of the 1920s.
Dilweg’s maternal great-grandfather, Roy Fitzgerald, was also involved in football at its grass roots, helping form a semi-pro team in Dayton, Ohio before the turn of the century. He, like LaVern Dilweg, later became a U.S. congressman — Dilweg a Democrat out of Wisconsin (1943-45) and Fitzgerald a Republican from Ohio (1921-31).
Anthony’s paternal grandmother, Eleanor Coleman, was a world record holder in the 100-meter breaststroke at age 16 and swam in the 1924 Paris Olympics.
Bob Dilweg played football for Wilson (D.C.) High’s last undefeated team (1952) and later at Marquette and William & Mary, while his brother Jon, Anthony’s uncle, played briefly for the Naval Academy. Anthony’s sister, Amy, was once ranked 14th in the world in the 50-meter freestyle as a senior at Maryland in 1985.
It was all heady stuff for young Anthony.
‘‘When you’re a kid aspiring for things, it sets the bar pretty high in the family,” he said. ‘‘But my parents were great. There hasn’t been a lot of pressure there.”
Blue Devils in the details
Thanks to his prolific 1983 season at Whitman, Dilweg’s recruiting stock soared. He took visits to Maryland, Duke, North Carolina and Pittsburgh. At one point, Southern California came calling, too, but told Dilweg that a blue chipper named Rodney Peete was their first choice. In the end, Dilweg chose Duke.
He redshirted his first season and played only sparingly at quarterback the next three years, seeing action mostly as a punter. In 1987, Dilweg’s junior year, Steve Spurrier took over as head coach, which turned out to be a godsend for Dilweg, who called Spurrier’s offensive system ‘‘refreshing.”
He remained a backup in 1987 but got his shot in his final season — just like at Whitman.
As the starter, he led Duke, a historical doormat program, to a 7-3-1 record and set single-season school records with 3,824 yards, 24 touchdowns and nine 300-yard passing games, earning Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year honors. In three prior seasons combined, he had thrown for 733 yards and three touchdowns.
‘‘I’m just counting my blessings that Spurrier showed up,” Dilweg said. ‘‘It was somewhat surreal.”
Dilweg played in three postseason all-star games, the Hula Bowl, the Japan Bowl and the Senior Bowl — the first being the most memorable. With Troy Aikman and Peete on the opposing team, Dilweg won Hula offensive MVP honors with a sterling performance. In the 1989 NFL Draft, he was taken in the third round by the Packers, the team his grandfather had played for 55 years earlier. He was the fourth quarterback chosen overall, while the Detroit Lions chose Peete in the sixth round.
Knee-deep
Once in the NFL, Dilweg faced a supportive role again. The Packers were the team of ‘‘The Magic Man,” quarterback Don Majkowski, who had the finest season of his 10-year career in 1989, throwing for 4,318 yards and 27 touchdowns. Dilweg’s statistics for the season: 1 for 1, seven yards.
But during the 1990 preseason, Majkowski held out for contractual reasons, giving Dilweg a shot. In the season opener against the Los Angeles Rams, he led an underdog Green Bay team to victory with a three-touchdown day, earning NFL player of the week honors. By the third game, Majkowski had agreed to terms and returned as the starter, leaving Dilweg only sporadic time on the field. He finished the season with 1,274 yards, eight touchdowns and seven interceptions in nine games.
Dilweg’s pro career quickly unraveled from there. Green Bay cut him during the 1991 preseason, and he spent that season trying out for eight different teams before signing with the Raiders. They sent him to the World League of American Football (now NFL Europe), where he was allocated to the Montreal Machine.
Dilweg only started four Montreal games in 1992 because of an injury to his right knee in the third game. The Raiders released him during preseason camp later that summer, prompting him to have surgery in October. He missed the 1993 season — his chances of rejoining the NFL dwindling every dormant moment — and by 1994, with his options severely limited, he took a pay cut and signed with the Shreveport (La.) Pirates, an expansion team of the Canadian Football League. After four games languishing on the bench, Dilweg hung up his cleats for good.
‘‘At that point, I was like, ‘Football is great, but there’s more to life than this,’” he said.
A new playbook
Shortly after retiring, Dilweg was with his wife, Jamie, in Hilton Head, S.C., decompressing from football, when Scott Stankavage, a former quarterback at North Carolina and a backup for the Broncos and Dolphins, called with a business proposition.
‘‘Me and my partners made a copy of a $1 million check, poster size, and sent it to him: ‘Here’s your first big deal,’” said Stankavage, who is in commercial real estate. ‘‘He’s a very charismatic guy, and we kind of appealed to that.”
Dilweg, who already had an interest in real estate, didn’t need much prodding. He joined Stankavage’s company, Advantis in Durham, N.C., as a leasing broker and dove headfirst into the business.
Bright and driven in the business world, Dilweg left Advantis 3 1⁄2 years later to pursue his own entrepreneurial goals. At age 40, he is now the CEO of The Dilweg Companies, a $230-million investment firm in Durham that owns and operates 3.5 million square feet of commercial real estate. Dilweg has made a name for himself in the Raleigh⁄Durham⁄Chapel Hill area — known as the Triangle — by aggressive, yet fair, tactics.
‘‘He has become more well-known in the last five years,” said Triangle Business Journal reporter Amanda Jones. ‘‘He’s out there on the edge, out there where other people don’t want to take a chance.”
Dilweg — who last year was featured on the cover of Space Magazine, a real estate publication in North Carolina, and on the inside cover of Duke’s alumni magazine — enjoys the thrill of the industry. In many ways, he likens it to playing football, with its constant risks and rewards. His football background, according to Stankavage, has been a main ingredient in his winning business formula.
‘‘It’s a direct, absolute, one-to-one corollary with business success,” Stankavage said. ‘‘It builds leadership, work ethic and intensity. Anthony, as a quarterback, had the ability to think on his feet, read and react. He could lead people when things looked bleak, lead and motivate people. These are all qualities that came straight off the athletic field.”
For the last seven years, Dilweg has also been scratching his football itch as the Duke Radio Network’s sideline analyst.
‘‘I’m a great fan of Duke football, but I’m not a great spectator,” he said. ‘‘It’s a nice way to keep me connected.”
With three children and a growing real estate empire, Dilweg doesn’t have much time for reflection these days. But every so often, he allows himself to survey his career, reflect on his continuation of the great Dilweg legacy and crack an inward smile.
‘‘You don’t really appreciate it until you go through it yourself and realize what a fine margin there is between professional sports and not playing,” he said.
Dilweg learned that as well as anyone. But oh, the things he did when playing.
