Ricky Williams 2005

By Ron Borges

The most mercurial running back since the days of Duane Thomas and the Dallas Cowboys is back in the NFL. Almost.

Ricky Williams won’t really be back until Monday and not even he probably knows how long he’ll be back for but one thing is clear – if he’s anywhere near what he once was he’s a back Miami can use…which is why the back is back two years after he broke the back of the Dolphins when his career literally went up in smoke.

Williams has tested positive for marijuana more times than he’d care to remember and it cost him two years of his career, millions of dollars and very probably a little self-respect but he’s back, he said this week, because he wants to be a back, which was not always the case.

Williams’ gifts are many on the football field but his motivation has always been suspect because he is a free thinking guy trying to co-exist in a world where thinking, let alone free thinking, is frowned upon.

Today’s NFL is a close-minded place where the employees are supposed to have but two interests – football and how to get better at football. Any other thoughts are considered subversive, although they are tolerated commensurate with your talent. The better you are the more free thinking you can be but under no circumstances can you be a guy as free as Ricky Williams wanted to be.

Free to smoke a little ganja. Free to question just how important football really should be in a man’s life. Free to play and then leave the stadium without allowing the media to turn him into a cartoon character, a pigskin zealot a super hero. Free to be he?

That’s why during a brief hiatus to the Canadian Football League a year ago, during one of his NFL suspensions, Williams seemed more comfortable in the reduced limelight. He was a Toronto Argonaut, which in the world of pro football is like being a “Where are they now’’ question. That was fine with him.

“You feel as if you have a life,’’ Williams said before a broken leg ended his brief career in Toronto. “I come to work, go home, play with my kid, walk to the store. It’s really nice.’’

That was a far cry from the structured, fishbowl existence of a former No. 1 draft pick in the NFL. It was also a far cry from the pay scale of a former No. 1 draft choice in the NFL but Williams seemed always to feel money was secondary to living his life.

That’s one reason he quit on the eve of the opening of training camp in 2004 and why he once went to live in a tent in aboriginal Australia for a time. To experience more of life than most people are interested in.

Of course, he also retired because he was facing a suspension and a $650,000 fine for violating the NFL’s drug policy so instead of being suspended he dropped out and moved to aptly named Grass Valley, California to study Ayurveda (the ancient form of Indian holistic medicine), smoke some weed and live a full life rather than be thought of as nothing more than a weekly highlight film.

Yet football, the game not the profession, tugged at him, retaining a hold on him similar to the kind most tacklers got on him when he was at his best – a tenuous one. He returned from “retirement’’ to play 12 games in 2005 after paying back a sizeable portion of a signing bonus he’d received when he first got to Miami. He shared without complaint running duties with former No. 1 pick Ronnie Brown, averaging 4.4 yards a carry (743 yards on 168 carries) after serving a four-game suspension. By the end of that year he was a train again, rushing for over 100 yards in each of his last two games and for over 170 in one of them.

Those numbers would cause a lot of backs to get a raise but other than his per carry average they were nearly half what he’d done in his last full season – 2003 – when he’d run for 1,372 yards and nine touchdowns while hauling the ball around 392 times. No wonder he was smoking marijuana after taking that kind of physical abuse.

A year earlier, he had his greatest season in the NFL, leading the league in rushing with 1,853 yards on 383 carries while running for 16 touchdowns. It was the third of four straight 1,000-yard seasons and the high-water mark of his career. Two years later he was “retired’’ and four years later he was suspended again for failing another drug test, a suspension that remained in effect until last week.

And now he’s back, he says, because he wants to be back again. But does he really want to be a back again?

“My motivation for coming back to the NFL?’’ he said when asked just that at his first press conference following the Dolphins’ announcement he was being welcomed back into their locker room. “Could we start with an easier question?

“My motivation is to get my life going again. Being out of football in the situation I was in makes it difficult, you know? I want to create a better life for myself and for my family, and being a football player, for me, is a big part of that.

“I’m not necessarily looking for it to end on a high note. It’s just going to help me to get where I want to be. I want to get on with my life. I want to go back to school and pursue a profession outside of football. Playing football is the best way for me to get there.’’

What that sounds like, frankly, is a guy who finally figured out that life as an itinerant yoga instructor and Ayurveda student, while perhaps more enjoyable than the battered life of an NFL ball carrier, doesn’t pay as well. So what if he did? That would only make him one of about 1700 NFL players to feel that way.

Williams said he’d been working out for about six weeks and one had to wonder what that meant. The last time he came out of one of his hiatuses he was well below his optimum playing weight and didn’t seem to be the same kind of bruising power back he’d been at Texas, with the Saints and finally in Miami until his long walkabout began.

Yet even at his oddest, there has always been a fondness for Williams among most of his teammates and many of those who got to know him, including Mike Wallace, who interviewed him for an odd but interesting 60 Minutes piece. The same day Williams returned to the Dolphins this week, hard-nosed Zach Thomas, who is about as opposite in approach to pro football from Williams as a man can be, told the Associated Press, “He won’t be a cancer in the locker room. He has always had a good work ethic. He’s always been a good person and a good teammate. Everybody deserves a second and third chance.’’

That’s the thing about Williams that the world outside of his locker room never quite understood. Sure he can be quirky but his teammates like him. Sure he says some odd things but he always ran HARD. When you carry the football 1088 times in three years for 4,470 your teammates don’t question your desire or how important football is to you.

Coaches might because to them there is no life but the football life but your teammates understand the pain involved in carrying the ball that many times. They understand the sacrifices you made and the important role you played in their success. They understand, regardless of what may come out of your mouth or go into it, you’re for real.

That’s why the outside world was a lot more unforgiving of his decision to leave football in 2004 than his teammates were when he wanted to come back and that’s why they’ve been a lot more embracing about his latest return then the public might be.

What’s he going to do now that he’s back? Who knows? Can he still run the way he once did after playing only 12 games since the end of the 2003 season? Hard to say.

Will he help a team as lowly as the Dolphins, who have yet to win a game? He can’t hurt, that’s for sure.

What we do know is this – Ricky Williams has a talent for carrying a football, creating a headline and living an unconventional life. What’s the crime in that?