DAVIE, Fla. — Tony Sparano is crazy about Ricky Williams' work ethic and his level of conditioning as the maelstrom of Miami Dolphins training camp begins anew, but there's nothing unusual about that.
Dave Wannstedt was every bit as sold on the former NFL rushing champion in the summer of 2004, right up until the wacky cell phone call from Hawaii when Ricky explained his decision to walk away from football on the eve of another training camp and see the world instead.
Then there was Nick Saban, who got one pretty good year from Ricky, including a 172-yard rushing game against Tennessee, but then lost him to another season-long drug suspension in 2006.
Rather than blowing his stack at the news, Saban invited Ricky over to the house for pizza to figure out what makes him tick. Everybody's always trying to do that, it seems.
"I don't know what Ricky's state of mind is," Saban said at the time. "What we need to do is support and help him in every way. He needs to manage and make choices that are going to be beneficial to his future in whatever it is he chooses to do. That's the focus."
On this fifth anniversary of Williams' retirement, he's focusing on maintaining a rare continuity with Sparano's staff, which has no choice but to trust him, and on getting the most out of his 32-year-old body, which Ricky pushed and pushed through a grueling off-season in Davie, participating in 46 of 46 possible workouts.
Is it all an illusion, a bubble of insane optimism near its bursting point once more? I don't pretend to know.
How can anyone say anything about Ricky with complete certainty? We all just try to get to know him better and hope for the best, which makes for a pretty shaky NFL game plan but always seems to win out over the alternative, which is giving up on one of the most fascinating talents that this or any other franchise has ever seen.
"I remember when he retired," said Sparano, who was an assistant coach on Bill Parcells' Dallas staff in 2004. "From afar I thought, 'This is a pretty good football player that just retired,' and I knew that he had a lot of good years left, a lot of good miles in him.
"At that point the only real experience I had with Ricky was watching him run up and down the field on us in Dallas on a Thanksgiving day, so that didn't go so well for us. I was trying to figure out how we could talk him out of retirement and see if we could have gotten him with us."
Last year, as the Dolphins made that stunning leap from 1-15 to a division title, Ricky rushed for 659 yards and four touchdowns, including scoring runs of 51 and 28 yards from the exotic Wildcat formation. Tony wants some more of that.
All that other stuff that went before, all those other Miami coaches who planned so heavily around Ricky and lived to regret it, hey, that was another time, another player, or so Williams has convinced the organization.
"Then," Ricky said this week of his early retirement, "the situation wasn't ideal for me. Now the situation is more than ideal. You know what they say, he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.
"As long as you don't burn bridges. Fortunately for me I haven't burned bridges. That's why I have this opportunity. Wayne Huizenga has been great through this whole thing, giving me the opportunity, and so is Bill Parcells, giving me this opportunity. I'm fortunate to have really good people in this organization."
People who continue to see the good in Ricky, and not just the goofy.
Let's face it, the guy's done more than burn bridges with this organization.
He's blown them sky high. Somehow, though, the apologies stick. The sincerity, too. It's hard not to like Ricky in the end, and it's virtually impossible not to love the depth he gives Miami at running back alongside starter Ronnie Brown.
At least he's thinking in more conventional ways about his life beyond football.
Gone are his ties with that holistic medicine school in California, where Ricky made friends who knew nothing of football and everything about herbs and massage and the ancient teachings of India's yoga masters. These days he's chipping away at some pre-med classes at Nova Southeastern University, right next door to Dolphins camp, and working toward a future osteopathic career.
"It didn't seem like most people cared who I was over at Nova this summer," Ricky said. "My teachers didn't know. It was really laid back that way. My real name is Errick, so I used that. The only time they say my name is when they take roll. It's easy to get lost."
A little too easy in this particular and often peculiar case.
Dave George writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: dave(underscore)george(at)pbpost.com.