

It wasn't that Williams didn't care after he got picked, he stopped caring when the Lions began to fine him for being above his mandated weight of 225 pounds (a weight Williams said he has never played at) and being late to meetings. Williams had 29 receptions for 350 yards and one touchdown while playing in 14 games during his rookie season, with his lone score coming in his NFL debut. By the end of the season Williams was being fined so regularly he was practically a volunteer player for the Lions.

"We fined him all the time," Millen said. "His whole first year I don't know if he even picked up a paycheck. I fined him his entire salary. Then the offseason came and part of his bonus was tied to his workouts and he didn't show up. He never showed up. He had to write me a check back for a big amount of money. That's when he started getting heavier and heavier, and when he came back the next year he was really heavy. It was ridiculous heavy. I don't remember what it was, but it was over 280. He didn't work at it. He didn't come up in the offseason. He just didn't care."

Williams was such an enigma to Millen during his time in Detroit that Millen would call the maternal figure in Williams' life, Kathy McCurdy, regularly to get her to talk to him but even her pleas fell on deaf ears after a while.

"I just lost the drive," Williams said. "I was going through a lot with football and I just lost the drive to keep doing it. I started going out and not taking care of myself and that took the forefront. My weight then was a clear sign of me not caring about me at the time."

A day after trading Williams and quarterback Josh McCown to the Oakland Raiders for a fourth round draft pick during the 2007 NFL draft, Millen called Williams and told him he needed to get serious about football or he would be out of the league within a year.

"You're going to have one more chance," Millen recalls telling Williams. "You're going to get this chance and one more, and that's it. You can't blow these opportunities, because you're too talented. Don't blow this opportunity. Of course, he ended up blowing it anyway."

Norm Chow was cleaning out his garage recently when his wife dusted off an oversized cardboard cover of Sports Illustrated with Matt Leinart scoring on a touchdown pass from Mike Williams in the 2004 Rose Bowl. It would clinch the Trojans' first national championship in 25 years and serve as Williams' last game at USC.

"It's a play I'll remember for the rest of my life," Chow said. "My wife saw it the other day and she asked, 'What are we doing with this?' I didn't know what to say. It brought back a lot of memories. That's the Mike Williams I'll always remember."

That Williams looked nothing like the player who showed up in Oakland after he was traded by the Lions. If it hadn't been for Lane Kiffin, who was the head coach of the Raiders at the time, and Chow, who was the offensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans, Williams might not have had a second and third chance in the NFL after his disastrous two-year stint in Detroit.

"When we got him he was just a different person; he had a completely different body," Kiffin said. "He had gained a bunch of weight. He was just never able to get back to his old self, physically. Unfortunately, we ended up having to cut him."

Williams was so lethargic and out of shape when he arrived in Oakland, Kiffin was forced to send him home from organized team activities and told him to go to Atlanta and work with Chip Smith at CES, who had worked with Williams off and on since he left USC. Smith was the only person who was ever able to get Williams motivated and in shape, but not even he could get through to the lost wide out then.



"When they kicked him out of OTAs in Oakland, Kiffin called me and Mike was supposed to be here the next day," Smith said. "He didn't show up for three weeks. They kept calling me every day and that was a pretty low point for me. You can only help someone who wants to help themselves."

Seven games into the 2007 season, the Raiders cut Williams.

A month later the Titans signed him when Chow convinced Titans coach (and former USC Trojan) Jeff Fisher to give Williams one more chance. It seemed the only ones willing to give Williams a chance were former Trojans still clinging to the hope he would somehow recapture the fire he had when he dominated college football.

"I talked to everyone in Tennessee hard about getting him," Chow said. "Oakland had cut him and I actually wanted to trade for him, but when they cut him I fought hard for us to sign him. When he got to Tennessee, he was 286 pounds. It was unbelievable. I really couldn't believe what I saw. He could still run around, but he was too heavy to play receiver."

Chow said he would constantly talk to Williams about getting in shape and getting back to his old self, but it was as though he was talking to someone else. This wasn't the same Williams who had dominated the competition while they were together at USC.

"He actually got me in trouble, because when he got here they said, 'What are you talking about? Why would you bring a 286-pound receiver here?'" said Chow, who was fired by the Titans after the season. "It was really disappointing. I don't know what allowed him to do that. Maybe instant fame or whatever when Detroit made him a top-10 pick and gave him all that money and he just didn't have that drive anymore."

Williams was cut by the Titans before ever catching a single pass for Tennessee.

"I just didn't go to the workouts, I wasn't involved," Williams said. "Everyone was saying I was eating this and drinking that, but it wasn't that. I just wasn't committed to it anymore."

'THE NATURAL MATURATION PROCESS'

Williams never officially retired from football. Sure, he had checked out physically and mentally in Detroit, but when he returned home to Los Angeles after the Titans cut him in the summer of 2008 he was still expecting another team to call him and give him another chance. Of course that call would never come. He had burned both his former offensive coordinator and receivers coach at USC, the only two coaches in the NFL who had ever seen firsthand a physically fit and motivated Williams in action, and by the end of September Kiffin and Chow would be out of the NFL as well.

"It was tough because I always wanted to play," Williams said. "Living in L.A. you can't go anywhere without someone coming up to you and saying, 'Aren't you Mike Williams? Didn't you used to play at SC?' I was constantly reminded about football and about what had happened."

As much as Williams wanted to play football, he was smart enough to realize he had blown chance after chance after chance and wouldn't be getting any more. So he refocused his energy on other aspects of his life. He had married his girlfriend, Gigi, a year earlier before Raiders training camp, and he began spending more time with their daughter Laila, who turned 7 two weeks ago. He also started a record company named The Right Way (TRW).

It didn't happen overnight but eventually the selfish, apathetic athlete turned into a hardworking husband, father and entrepreneur.

"I started my record company from scratch and learned the ins and outs of the business and understood that it's OK to take some chances even if they don't work out," Williams said. "While I was running my company I realized that I'm older, I'm a little more mature, I'm smarter, and sat back and I said, 'Look at the effort and everything I'm putting into this company.' I thought if I was putting all this effort into this company, let's see what would happen if I put that kind of effort into my first passion, which is football."

After everything he's been through it's easy to forget Williams is just 26. He remembers sitting on his couch last October with his daughter watching the NFL Network when a program on the top 10 NFL draft busts came on. Williams grimaced at the prospect of hearing his name but the sad reality was Williams' time in the NFL wasn't even noteworthy enough to be included on the list.

At least all-time busts are annually remembered; Williams was already a forgotten man.

Laila had never really seen her dad play football. She had seen the pictures and jerseys and trophies but she wanted to see him play and do what he loved. "Daddy, I want you to play football again," she said.

"I think you have the natural maturation process when you have to take care of someone else and you have different responsibilities like kids," said Williams, who along with Gigi welcomed another daughter, Ava, to the family six months ago. "That naturally changes how you are and dealing with different priorities. I've always [kept] to myself, but there were a lot of people who genuinely cared about me and wanted to be involved. One of the main things that really changed in me is having a family and understanding it wasn't just about me."

Williams played in two games with the Titans, but didn't catch a ball in 2007. His career appeared over. AP Photo/Mark Humphrey

'IT WAS TOUGH BUT IT MADE HIM STRONGER'

Kathy McCurdy smiles when she thinks of Williams as a husband and a father of two beautiful daughters. It wasn't too long ago that she welcomed a 15-year-old troublemaker with nowhere to go into her house, making him part of the family.

McCurdy, a 5-foot-2, white attorney from Tampa, and her husband Jack, a chief executive of a medical group, have known Williams for years. He would often come over to their house with Gertrude Lawson, his great-aunt and guardian since he was 2 years old, when Lawson babysat McCurdy's three young children, Chris, Ryan and Ali.

One day during the summer of 2000, McCurdy saw Lawson crying at a YMCA near her house. Williams had been suspended from school again. He was getting mixed up with the wrong crowd and making the wrong decisions. Lawson had done her best to take care of Williams after his biological mother began battling addiction. Lawson, however, didn't know what else she could do. Williams had never met his father and continued to get into trouble.

McCurdy promised to take care of Williams. She went to his school the next day and told him he was coming back to their house. Not just for a couple of days, but for good. He went from struggling to find a roof over his head at night to sharing bunk beds with Ryan, who was 12 at the time. He once kept his belongings in a 1983 Honda Civic. Now, he would go shopping with Ali, who was 8 years old, and play video games with Chris, who was 14.

Quinton Aaron and Sandra Bullock made Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher a household name. Skip Bolen/Getty Images



"When Mike moved into the house that was it. It wasn't like he was moving into the house for a little bit," McCurdy said. "I told him, 'This is what you're part of now, and that's the way it is.' The boys were his little brothers and Ali was his little sister. He came in and treated her the same way Chris and Ryan treated her, and was protective and confided in Chris and Ryan like they were his brothers. When you look back on it and try to put it into words you can't. That's just the way it was. It was just natural."

The bond between Williams and the McCurdys actually grew stronger when Williams left for USC. He would call home almost every day and when his family would come to visit him for games he would always introduce Kathy and Jack as his mom and dad and Ryan, Chris and Ali as his brothers and sister. Even when he went to Los Angeles they still made time to take a picture for their annual Christmas cards, which would always feature Williams towering over the rest of his family.

It was a Hollywood screenplay. Before "The Blind Side," before Michael Oher was a household name.

In fact, Williams and the McCurdys were approached by movie producers after USC beat Michigan to win a share of the national championship in 2004. The conversations, however, fell apart when Williams unsuccessfully tried to follow Clarett into the NFL draft a couple months later.

A year later the relationship between Williams and Kathy McCurdy almost fell apart when Millen constantly called McCurdy to try to motivate Williams into getting in shape and taking football seriously.