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
Football is my job, not my life, but it's a job I'm going to give my all for as long as I'm in it.
My helmet is off; I'm not afraid anymore.
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.
If I was doing something for the money, I'd be quite miserable.
I got high, and forgot I wasn't supposed to get high.
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.
I don't believe in regret.
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.
The NFL has been an amazing page in this chapter of my life. I pray that all successive adventures offer me the same potential for growth, success and most importantly fun.
The people that I see on the street, they treat me more as a human being and not just an icon or a football player.
The problem wasn't with the city, the sport, my teammates or my coach, even though I blamed all of them at one time or another. The problem was with me. But I didn't realize it back then because I hadn't been told that there was a clinical reason -- social anxiety disorder -- for everything odd I was feeling, everything from the depression to the shyness. I didn't understand that some of the things that were holding me back were chemical.
When he first got drafted, you heard people wonder why you'd take a No. 2 pick for a guy that didn't even start in college,