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
When I retired, I felt that I lived more in that year than I had the previous 27 years of my life.
Greatness is the willingness to choose in the midst of intensity.
I got high, and forgot I wasn't supposed to get high.
Maybe I'm stupid or whatever, but to me if I got a concussion, if I could see straight and I could carry a football then I'm not telling anybody.
At the core, we're all spiritual beings.
I led the NFL in attempts the past two years and they really didn’t go out and get a quarterback to help me so I knew it’s going to be all on me again. I could see my mortality as a football player, that I’m not going to be able to do this much longer. It just became obvious to me that playing football for me is not going to be fun, not something I’m going to enjoy and it’s time for me to do something different.
Everywhere I go, people hear Ricky Williams and the next thing they think is marijuana or wasted talent.
And any time you feed your ego, it's a one-way street. ... There were so many things I had to deal with that erased the positives I got from playing the game that it wasn't worth it. It's like eating a Big Mac and drinking a Diet Coke.
I can look back at it now as definitely like an initiation into adulthood. Almost overnight in the NFL, I was put on a pedestal and I was supposed to be this icon or this image of what a professional athlete was supposed to be. I felt like I just got stuck trying to be someone else and I forgot who I actually was.
After I won the Heisman Trophy, it just was OK, I’m supposed to go to the NFL and so that’s what I did. I didn’t really have any expectations and I didn’t really understand how things worked.
Depending on their fondest memory of you, most people hold on so tightly to their fondest memory they don’t usually let you be anything greater than that. And that’s one of the things I think I allowed myself to be a victim of earlier in my career. What I learned as I got older is I decide. I decide what it’s like for me, not other people. You can be whatever you’d like to be. You just have to choose it.
Nine in the box... that's a football term.
I've let a lot of things go, and obviously football is one of them. I think the hardest thing to let go is your self-image. That's what I'm working on now.
I really do love football.