Ricky Williams
Ricky Williams
Errick Lynne "Ricky" Williams Jr.is a retired American football running back who played twelve seasons in the National Football Leagueand one season in the Canadian Football League. He played college football for the University of Texas, where he was a two-time All-American and won the Heisman Trophy. Williams was drafted by the New Orleans Saints fifth overall in the 1999 NFL Draft and spent three seasons with the team before he was traded to the Miami Dolphins in 2002. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFootball Player
Date of Birth21 May 1977
CitySan Diego, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I think sometimes when it comes to sports, and especially relationships between players and coaches, that people lose track, lose a sense of reality.
I am an honest, God-fearing man who is intensely dedicated to being the best person I can be on and off the football field.
I had this notion that everyone was staring at me and judging everything about me, from my appearance to the way I talk and everything.
If you replace the word God in the Bible with the word Truth, it reads exactly right.
A team takes on the personality of the head coach.
Sometimes success will get in the way of maturity - at least temporarily.
I don't think people change. I think they definitely mature. But I think the essence of what I am today is the same as when I was five years old. It's just maturity. I've become a healthier, fuller expression of that essence.
In therapy, I see myself in the mirror differently.
I have no room in my life for any form of negativity or nonacceptance.
When you make that crossover from life to real life, when you're not treated as a child anymore but as a man, and you are no longer given the benefit of the doubt, it takes some courage to face that.
I'm closer to being happy. I'm doing things that make me happy. In football I loved to practice and I loved to play, but I hated to be in meetings, hated to talk to the media, hated to have cameras in my face, hated to sign autographs. I hated to do all those things.
Anytime you play a team sport, the success of the team really makes everything better. It's nice.
It's something that I had been pushing down my whole life. The search for meaning, I guess, the whispering of the soul.
I would drive home and see people wearing my No. 34 jersey and wonder why, because I didn't feel worthy of that. And all the time I just knew people were staring at me, talking about me everywhere I went.