With Miami feeling hotter than New Delhi, Dolphins running back Ricky Williams had to feel right at home.
His actions, which led to his press conference, created the biggest buzz to hit South Florida since Shaquille O’Neal.
This is how big it was: Dolphins senior vice president/media relations Harvey Greene received an e-mail wishing him good luck with the press conference from none other than the King of Press Conferences, former White House press secretary Ari Fleisher.
Turned out Greene didn’t need the luck, and Fleisher probably would have been better off directing his e-mail missive at his successor, Scott McClellan.
But we digress. Back to Williams.
Some impressions stood out from the day’s events.
No. 1 — Williams, despite speculation, is not getting traded this season. No way. For starters, he will miss the first four games of the season due to an NFL suspension, and with the Dolphins having a bye in Week 4, Williams will get to play only one game before the trading deadline. Then there’s these other factors.
Williams is one strike away from a year-long ban. He’s coming off a lengthy hiatus on the other side of the world.
He has proven to be unreliable, and has little value to any other team this season — at least any value any team would be willing to surrender.
If the Titans traded a third-round pick for Travis Henry, and no team is willing to give up so much as a third- or fourth-round pick for Shaun Alexander, how are the Dolphins going to recoup anything of value for Williams this season? They can’t; not now.
Next season is a different story. But Williams will be spending this season in Miami, rehabbing his reputation, building back up his value, positioning himself and the Dolphins for a better deal in the future.
But not this season
No. 2 — The most overblown story in football, next to T.O.’s rants, was how the Dolphins players would react to Williams.
The short answer — just fine.
After Williams apologized to them at a team meeting July 24, he had begun the process of mending fences. Sounds like it already has worked.
“At first it was a little uncomfortable, but then once we started to talk, everything was fine after that,” Dolphins linebacker and team leader Zach Thomas said. “He did a great job putting himself out to the whole team. It was probably pretty hard for him to come out and apologize, but you could tell he wasn’t just doing it because somebody told him to do it. He did it coming from the heart. He was sincere and honest, and you felt him. He wasn’t just saying it to say it.
“I just told him to go out there and show he’s committed and work hard. That’s the type of player he is. He’s a hard worker. It’s still a distraction if you beat it up too much. He kept it simple, but he said everything right. He didn’t drag it out and he didn’t want to be a distraction. That’s the one thing he said. I thought he did a great job.”
Asked if Williams needs to do any more explaining, Thomas said: “No, no. It’s over. It was over before he even got here. You should get second chances. If he came in here and was like, ‘Hey, I did what I did and didn’t really feel sorry about it,’ it would be different, but he does. He feels bad about it. He put himself in a situation that he’s in. He was a man. He stood up and he talked about it. He told the whole team first. I thought he did a great job at it.”
Now Williams needs to go back to doing the great job he has done on the field. Because for the start of training camp, Dolphins coach Nick Saban listed Williams at the bottom of the depth chart.