Searching for Ricky Williams

In this weekend's Hot Clicks: One reporter's quest to track down Ricky Williams after the star running back's 2004 departure from the NFL, head coaching news and more.

8 Days With Ricky

In April 2010, ESPN released the 12th film of its 30 for 30 documentary film series in its infancy after launching six months earlier. The film, Run Ricky Run, chronicled Ricky Williams’ 2004 departure from the NFL amid another positive marijuana test. While the film was fantastic, one of the best in 30 for 30’s Volume I, it could’ve been better, we learned on Friday.

If you don’t know Chris Jones from his many years at Esquire, ESPN, and other publications, you may remember him from his George Clooney Twitter thread in May 2020. On Friday, Jones wrote another Twitter thread:

“Back in 2004, Ricky Williams, the American football player, left the Miami Dolphins after a third strike for smoking weed and disappeared. He’d had a notable career besides, but this was the capper: He said goodbye to his coach from Hawaii and vanished off the face of the Earth.”

It was the first of 15 tweets in which Jones recalls searching for Williams in Australia in 2004.

Coaching News

Mike McCarthy made a lot of bad decisions during his final years as the Green Bay Packers’ head coach. Hiring Mike Pettine as Dom Capers’s replacement before the 2018 season was not one of them. After allowing Capers to waste several years of Aaron Rodgers’s career with appalling defensive schemes, McCarthy finally hired a real defensive coordinator. It was the smart move at the time, as was Matt LaFleur’s decision to retain Pettine upon his arrival in Green Bay two years ago.

LaFleur made another smart move on Friday in firing Pettine. Technically, Pettine’s expired contract wasn’t renewed, but, for all intents and purposes, he was fired.

“You know someone had to go,” a source told Bill Huber of SI FanNation Packer Central. “You can’t let [Tom] Brady just stand there for four, five, six seconds.”

Potential candidates to replace Pettine include Kris Richard, Jim Leonhard, Jerry Gray and others. Capers, meanwhile, is back in the NFC North.

More coaching nuggets: 10 potential candidates for UCF head coach … Danny White is focusing on the big issues after his Josh Heupel hire … Grading every 2021 NFL head coach hire … Grading every 2021 college football head coach hire ... Nick Sirianni was a rambling, nervous wreck during his press conference … Lovie Smith is going to Houston.

4 Years Later...

...we’re still learning new details in the college basketball corruption scandal.

In a previously undisclosed phone call, an unnamed Kansas assistant coach supported paying a family member of a recruit. In the call, which wasn’t presented as evidence in any of the trials for Jim Gatto, Christian Dawkins and others at the center of the scandal that first broke in 2017, the assistant admitted to knowing that paying for a recruit’s brother to visit the school violated NCAA rules.

Odds & Ends

10 strangest Super Bowl prop bets … 20 most fascinating people in and around Super Bowl LV … Best trade destinations for NBA stars … ICYMI: Nolan Arenado is going to St. Louis … Someone bet $2.3 million on the Bucs … A Northwestern cheerleader filed a lawsuit against the school, alleging fans groped her at university events, and the coach required women to “mingle” with donors … The Texans have “zero interest” in trading Deshaun Watson, according to their new GM … The Browns will wear 75th anniversary throwback uniforms in 2021.

Why’d They Stop?

Yes, Please

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