The running back with the smoky past knew almost everything would be different about the Miami Dolphins once Bill Parcells took over as the team's majordomo, and after so many losses, Williams welcomed the changes. And then he sat quietly in the meeting where Parcells first addressed his players.

MARC SEROTA / Getty Images Dolphins running back Ricky Williams warms up prior to a preason game against the Kansas City Chiefs on Aug. 23 at Dolphin Stadium in Miami. The San Diego Chargers travel to Miami to face Williams and the Dolphins on Sunday.

“He made a speech about he didn't want troublemakers on the team,” Williams said yesterday via telephone. “I was convinced I was outta here.”

He sure had the baggage for it. His terrific (if abbreviated) numbers as a player notwithstanding, Williams also had some trepidation and expectation of more bad news as he went upstairs for his one-on-one talk with Parcells about whatever future they had together in South Florida.

“It was quite the opposite,” Williams said. “He said that he really thought I could still play in this league. I think he's probably been one of my staunchest supporters, and he's really helped make this year much easier for me.”

This year effectively is Williams' latest return to the NFL, not from the suspended list or anything like that, but from a pectoral injury sustained in the first game after he was reinstated by the NFL from his second drug-related suspension last November. He's very much a part of the Dolphins' offensive plans – some of which are pretty quirky, too – and has the full attention of a Chargers defense that will be trained Sunday on stopping him and fellow Dolphins running back Ronnie Brown.

“Growing up in San Diego, I was a big Chargers fan,” said Williams, a multisport star at Patrick Henry High who went on to win the Heisman Trophy at Texas. “I always have mixed feelings about playing the Chargers. I think I'm a little envious that I never ended up (playing) in San Diego.”

Williams tends to evoke mixed feelings, too, on a fairly frequent basis. Ever since he hit the NFL in 1999, the headlines have had much less to do with his running ability than the nonstatistical stuff, starting with the way Mike Ditka traded away the New Orleans Saints franchise to draft Williams and then the way Williams was throwing away his career with failed drug tests and atypical behaviors, some of which have been attributed to social anxiety disorder.

Two days ago, Williams admitted to The Miami Herald that after all the problems that marijuana use has caused him, he was tempted to use it again a few days ago while the Dolphins were on their bye weekend.

“Most definitely,” Williams said yesterday. “It's greater because, like, Thursday, Coach (Tony Sparano) told us we had Friday off, so automatically your mind, which is so constrained since training camp began – every day is a grind, it's a grind, it's a grind – and then Coach says, 'You're free.' And the mind says, 'I'm free, what can I do?'

“So there was definitely an urge. But I just thought about what I have to lose and it was easy. The urge didn't last very long.”

Williams said he chose instead to spend his free time in meditation, adding that he never really came close to acting on the brief urge to smoke marijuana and would have called for help before succumbing to temptation. But Williams, subject to testing nine times a month as a result of his two suspensions, couldn't promise that marijuana is out of his life for good.

Perhaps it's just a matter of conditioned response, but when Williams returned to the team after The Herald story broke, there was no real fallout.

“I'm glad to say that some of my teammates kinda joked with me about it, but the coaches didn't say anything,” Williams said. “So for the most part, it's a dead subject.”

Evidently so. With all the changes the Dolphins have been going through over the past several months, nobody's going to get too upset because Williams had a passing thought. If the team wanted to go on without concern over the allure of marijuana to Williams and the decisions he makes, he would be gone by now.

“Ricky Williams has been tremendous,” said Sparano, the team's rookie head coach. “From the first day I walked through the door, Ricky has been a professional.”

Because the Dolphins have struggled for so long – partly because of Williams' on-and-off availability, including a year taken off and a season in the Canadian Football League – it's usually overlooked that Williams has considerable on-field accomplishments to go with all the off-field stuff.

Put together his total time with Miami and it amounts to just two full seasons, plus bits of two others, yet he's one of the greatest running backs in the Dolphins' vaunted history. Not even Larry Csonka had more 100-yard rushing games than Williams' 19, including 10 in 2002 and seven in 2003, the top two seasons in Dolphins annals (both served with Norv Turner as Miami's offensive coordinator). In those 19 games, Miami went 16-3.

In 2002, his first season with the Dolphins, Williams played the second of his four career games against the Chargers, rushing 143 yards and scoring twice on 29 carries in a 30-3 blowout. As the favorite team of his childhood comes to town, Williams, 31, is not even the Dolphins' most celebrated running back, not since Brown started taking direct snaps and produced five touchdowns in a huge upset at New England two Sundays ago.

Admitting that he's much more aware of his career being on the back end, Williams said he has come to grips with the game, handling the stresses that come with it. While acknowledging that the big paydays are nice, he wonders aloud how other people would deal with the sort of constant pressure that players are under.

“Imagine your job, if your boss has a video camera on you every step you take and he's always going to have something to say to you about how it can be a better step,” Williams said. “It's a lot for 16 weeks, every day, being pushed like that.”

Chris Jenkins: (619) 293-1267; chris.jenkins@uniontrib.com