A CAREER RISING FROM THE ASHES

Bernard Williams' Head Is Clear, But Path Back Isn't

Bernard Williams had it all, and then he had nothing.

He had fame and fortune and a sky's-the-limit football career. And then he
threw it all away.

"I was young and dumb," Williams said. "Not many people get the
opportunities I had. And I wasted them."

In record time. Williams was the Eagles' first-round pick in the 1994
draft, the 14th player taken. The difference between him and the other
offensive linemen the Eagles had selected in the first round of the
previous nine drafts - Kevin Allen, Antone Davis and Lester Holmes - was
that Williams actually could play.

The 6-8, 300-pounder out of the University of Georgia started every game at
left tackle as a rookie and more than held his own. He made several
all-rookie teams, and figured to be protecting the blind side of Eagles
quarterbacks for years to come.

But it didn't quite work out that way.

After his promising rookie season, Williams would never play another game
for the Eagles, or anyone else in the NFL. Shortly after reporting to
training camp in July 1995, the league gave him a six-game suspension for
failing to complete a drug-treatment program after testing positive for
marijuana. Three months later, he was suspended again, this time for one year.

He tried to apply for reinstatement in the spring of '96, but couldn't
convince the league he had stopped using marijuana. He still hadn't gone to
a drug-treatment facility, and hadn't been tested since his suspension.

"I still hadn't gotten a grip on my marijuana use," Williams said. "People
from the league told me I wasn't ready for reinstatement. They said it
would be best for me if I didn't apply at that time. That's when I kind of
said forget it.

"I still wanted to play in the NFL. But I was bitter about what went on. I
figured that at some point and time, I'd get sick of just sitting around
and not playing and give it another try."

It is a Saturday morning in mid-March and Bernard Williams is seated at a
table in the restaurant of a North Jersey hotel, munching on a sandwich and
talking about what might have been and what he hopes still could be.

Nearly six years after his marijuana use got him tossed from the NFL,
Williams is back playing football. He's the starting left tackle for the
XFL's Memphis Maniax, who are in town to play the New York/New Jersey
Hitmen at Giants Stadium. The crowd that night will be considerably smaller
than the ones Williams played in front of as a rookie with the Eagles. But
he isn't complaining.

Williams will be 29 in July. He weighs just 255 pounds now, which is nearly
50 pounds lighter than his playing weight with the Eagles.

"I need to put some weight back on," he said. "Everybody wants to know how
I lost it. It wasn't like I was trying. I just changed my diet. I don't eat
beef or pork or fatty stuff. I eat to live instead of living to eat.

"When I reported to training camp, I weighed just 247. Everybody thought I
was a receiver. When they found out I played tackle, everybody was lining
up to bull-rush me in pass-protection drills. But it wasn't as easy as they
thought."

Williams actually started playing football again last year. He signed with
the B.C. Lions in the Canadian Football League, but didn't get much playing
time. When the XFL came along, he signed with the Maniax in his hometown of
Memphis.

"He was so damn skinny when he got here," said Maniax general manager Steve
Ehrhart. "A lot of people were skeptical that he could hold his own. They
thought they'd roll him up like a window shade. I also was a little nervous
because of what had happened in Philadelphia. But he's been a pleasant
surprise. He's been a mainstay on the left side. He just needs to add some
mass."

Williams eventually hopes to get another shot at playing in the NFL. But
first, he must apply to the league for reinstatement, which he said he
intends to do when the XFL season is over.

Before the NFL will give him the green light to come back, though, he will
have to enter the league's drug program and undergo drug-testing - possibly
for as long as a year - before he can play again.

"Under normal circumstances, if he were actually playing and sat out a
year, he would have had to have been tested for that year before he'd come
back," said NFL executive vice president Harold Henderson. "So why would we
give a guy who's been out a lot longer than that an added advantage? [One
year of testing] may very well be the minimum. Logically, you certainly
could make a case for [not letting him play] until next year."

Because Williams still was under contract to the Eagles when he was
suspended in '95, they still own his NFL rights, though it remains to be
seen how much interest they would have in him if he does get reinstated.

"I don't know what we would do," Eagles executive vice president Joe Banner
said. "I didn't even know he was playing in the XFL, to tell you the truth.
That would be Andy [Reid] and Tom's [Modrak] call. It was very
disappointing when he got suspended. At the time, everyone in the
organization felt he had the potential to be an outstanding player."

Bob Ackles, who was the Eagles' football operations chief during Williams'
rookie season, now is the general manager of the XFL's Las Vegas Outlaws.
He has seen Williams play this season and has been very impressed. He
thinks he still could play in the NFL.

"Sitting out as long as he has makes it tough," Ackles said. "But on the
plus side, he hasn't been beaten up. He's just 28. If he puts his mind to
it and brings his weight up and stays straight, there's no reason he can't
[play in the NFL]."

The key is staying straight. Williams said he started smoking marijuana
back in high school. He said it became a crutch to help him cope - or
rather, not cope - with the deaths of first his father, and then his
mother. His father died when he still was in high school. His mother was
diagnosed with breast cancer when he was a senior at the University of
Georgia. She died in 1996.

"It became a problem for me because I didn't want to deal with losing them.
[Marijuana] helped me not have to deal with it.

"It was ultimately my fault. It was my drug use that got me suspended. But
I was a 21-year-old kid. I thought things could have been handled a lot
better. If I had been disciplined in the beginning, I think I would have
straightened myself up.

"But I spent my whole rookie year doing whatever I wanted to do and nobody
said anything about it. People [from the organization] said, 'We know
you're smoking weed.' But I was never suspended without pay or anything
like that. They never told me I was going to be tested randomly."

The league's current drug policy wasn't instituted until late '94. Before
that, testing was controlled by the individual clubs, according to NFL
Players Association chief Gene Upshaw.

"Back then, each club dealt with it differently," Upshaw said. "And they
dealt with it within the club differently for each player. If you were a
starting quarterback or star player, you were treated a lot differently
than a special-teams guy or a backup."

Williams said he regularly smoked marijuana at Georgia. He didn't test
positive for it at the NFL scouting combine before the '94 draft, but said
he failed a drug test shortly after joining the Eagles.

"But my [marijuana] count wasn't that high and they weren't really on me
about it," Williams said. "Otho [Davis, the late Eagles trainer] was the
first person to say something to me. He told me to get myself into [drug
rehab] and stop smoking. [He did neither.] That was pretty much it. That
was the only thing they told me.

"Then they started giving me tests during the ['94] season. But they'd
never tell me whether I passed or failed them. I never received any
documentation that I had failed a test or what would happen or anything
like that."

One person who was in the Eagles' front office back in '94 said he didn't
become aware that Williams had tested positive for marijuana until late in
his rookie season. He admitted that the organization probably didn't treat
it as seriously as it should have at the time because it was marijuana
rather than cocaine.

"I remember everybody kind of thinking, 'OK, it's just marijuana. Anything
else? No, nothing else,' " he said, speaking on the condition that he not
be identified. "Everybody just assumed that he'd stop doing it and
everything would be fine. Looking back on it, I guess that was pretty
naive. It's not that easy [to stop]."

Said Upshaw: "I didn't know marijuana was addictive. But I guess it's like
smoking."

After the failed drug test in the spring of 1995, with the new drug policy
in place, the NFL informed Williams that he needed to check himself into a
drug-treatment facility or he would be suspended. Williams went, but walked
out after only a few days.

"They sent me to a place just outside of Philadelphia," Williams said. "A
lot of people there knew my face, knew who I was. That made me
uncomfortable. I was looking to go someplace where nobody would know me and
I could get this thing taken care of. But everybody in the facility pretty
much knew who I was. I couldn't get around it.

"I called and told the Eagles I didn't want to be there and was going to
leave. They said if I left I'd be suspended. But I didn't care. By the time
I got home the next day, I had a FedEx package waiting for me from the
league saying I'd been suspended for six games. And if I failed another
test, I'd be suspended for the year.

"Like an idiot, I left the rehab place, went home and smoked [marijuana].
They tested me again the next day and that was it. I was suspended for the
season."

Williams' six-game suspension was announced shortly after the Eagles opened
training camp in '95. He returned to the team in mid-October, but before he
could be activated, the one-year suspension was announced.

The Eagles ended up doing pretty well without Williams in '95. Under new
coach Ray Rhodes, they went 10-6 and made it to the second round of the
playoffs.

As for Williams, the longer he was away from the game, the less inclined he
was to get his life together and apply for reinstatement.

"Not having a father, I didn't have anybody to really give me strong advice
and direction," he said. "I pretty much was on my own since high school. I
guess a lot of people were afraid to approach me and set me straight and
tell me how to live my life. I didn't get a lot of that.

"When I got suspended I was bitter. But I eventually got over it. Instead
of being [angry] at the league, I got [angry] at myself. I realized that it
was my fault and that I controlled my own destiny."

Williams said he finally stopped smoking marijuana a couple of years ago.

"At some point, it just got old," he said. "The stuff I wanted to do, I
couldn't. I couldn't sleep for two, three years. Finally, I realized that
the reason I couldn't sleep was because I wasn't doing anything every day.
Four o'clock in the morning, I'd be up watching TV."

Williams played a lot of basketball after he was suspended from the NFL. He
was an all-city player in high school in Memphis and always has felt at
home on a playground. Any playground. For a while, he even toyed with the
idea of playing basketball in Europe.

"After I got suspended, I didn't watch a lot of football," he said. "I
think that's one of the reasons I stayed out so long. I distanced myself
from the game. The first two or three years, I don't think I watched a
single pro game. I watched a lot of college football, but no pro football."

But last year, he started to miss football again. His agent, Terris Mathis,
encouraged him to go to Canada and resume his career. Because the CFL has a
working agreement with the NFL, he needed the Eagles' permission. They gave
it. He didn't need their permission to play in the XFL this spring.

"The competition [in the XFL] is better than the CFL," Williams said.
"They've still got some kinks to work out. But I'm glad I did it. I'm glad
I got back into football when I did.

"I don't know what's going to happen next. Talentwise, I have no doubt that
I can still play [in the NFL]. But if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen.
It's not the end-all for me. My life's coming back together now, and that's
what I'm happiest about."

A pause, a bite of a sandwich, and then:

"But I think it'll make a great movie if I ever can make it back."