'My Sister's Keeper': How stepping away from football helped Utah's Joe Williams cope with sister's death

Joe Williams heard his father’s screams from the next room as his sister lay in death’s grip. But Williams felt paralyzed, strapped down to his bed by shock and emotions.

Nearly a decade later, through the start of a 2016 season in which he emerged as one of the most productive and puzzling running backs in college football, Williams was still having flashbacks – to helping 7-year-old Kylee when she fell out of bed earlier that night, to carrying her to the bathroom, to riding to the hospital where she was pronounced dead of an undiagnosed heart problem.

“That’s where the guilt comes in,” Williams told USA TODAY Sports recently. “Because maybe if I had got out of my bed and maybe I’d held her or she knew I was there, maybe she would’ve woken up. That was the biggest reason of why I blame myself.”

This is the story behind the story of Williams walking away from the University of Utah football team in September – a story he’s telling NFL teams as they prepare for April’s draft and trying to figure out whether Williams might walk out on them, too.

He rejoined the Utes less than a month after his so-called retirement, flashing the speed that intrigues scouts while running for 1,300 yards and 10 touchdowns in their last seven games. A fresh tattoo reading “My Sister’s Keeper” on his left arm gave a clue to where his head had been.

Williams, 23, doesn’t blame his legal issues and other past mistakes on what happened June 19, 2007, nor was it the sole reason he needed a break last fall. He was worn out mentally and physically. He was compensating with prescription drugs. But those who know Williams best believe the process of forgiving himself has been the toughest run of his life.

“Do we ever know? How does somebody actually deal with that?” said Williams’ mother, Jo-Anne Hayden-Williams, voice cracking over the phone. “My husband and I still deal with it. You can suppress your feelings and then when you start talking about it, it brings it up.”

THE PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL TOLL

It wasn’t Williams’ fault.

According to a lawsuit filed by the family, Kylee had chest pain, vomiting and other symptoms when she was admitted to the emergency room the previous day. She was diagnosed with a viral syndrome and dehydration and discharged. Joe Williams, then 13 years old, said he helped monitor her fluids overnight. But when Kylee fell out of bed again, it was her father, Kenny, who found her halfway under the bed, foam coming out of her nose and eyes rolled back in her head.

“She was actually having heart attacks,” Kenny Williams said. “I didn’t understand what was going on. I’m yelling and screaming trying to get her to wake up.”

A 911 call brought an ambulance that took Kylee to a different hospital, but it was too late. She died roughly 13 hours after she’d left the ER. The autopsy revealed the cause of death was acute myocarditis – inflammation of the heart muscle.

Joe Williams recalls giving depositions as part of the lawsuit (the court approved a financial settlement in 2012), attending counseling and therapy he didn’t like, lashing out at his parents and through his behavior. When Williams was 18, his father said, he was diagnosed with manic depression.

“We could tell he was not the person that he normally is,” Kenny Williams said. “And even now, he has his good days and he has his bad days. I believe he smiles a lot because he doesn’t want people to see the pain.”

There were other challenges. Williams had to transfer from one high school in Allentown, Pa., because he lived outside the district, until his mother took a second job to pay for a new apartment. He spent a rough semester at a military academy to qualify to play football at the University of Connecticut. He pled guilty to a shoplifting charge. He struggled academically at UConn and lost his scholarship after receiving a backpack purchased with a stolen credit card. He enrolled at a junior college in Brooklyn before landing at Utah, where he showed well in place of injured star Devontae Booker down the stretch in 2015, but knew by spring practice he wanted out.

The emotional strain had left Williams feeling he lacked physical fortitude. He had shin splints and overall body pain. He took prescription Tylenol and sometimes Vicodin or Percocet to get through the day, NyQuil to sleep, Adderall to wake up. After two poor games to start last season, getting yelled at by Utah coach Kyle Whittingham and benched in a win over BYU, Williams informed the team “I can’t do it anymore,” Whittingham recalled.

“What brought me to the decision was just how bad my mental health was going,” Williams said. “Before leaving, there would times of the day where I would always be that 13-year-old kid grieving about his sister, and just holding her as she died in my arms. I took a lot of painkillers to mask the pain that I had from it, the stress that it was causing. And football just wasn’t a big enough outlet for that emotion.”

Williams’ father had suspected something was wrong, but his son wouldn’t admit it until he delivered the news. His mother hung up the phone and cried. Williams had really only confided in his then-fiancée, Jasmine Jones, who lost her father to a heart attack in 2006.

“He told me that his sister was on his mind for some reason – this year particularly,” said Jasmine, who married Williams on Dec. 8. “He just needed that breath, that break, to know that his sister’s always going to be right there on his shoulder.”

‘A DIFFERENT PERSON WHEN HE CAME BACK’

Williams got the tattoo started amidst what he calls “a lot of soul-searching” during his time away from football. He says he received psychiatric help and counseling, kept taking online classes, looked for a job. He says he never gave up on playing in the NFL, even before Utah coaches approached him in light of injuries that decimated the backfield and Williams returned with a 34-carry, 179-yard explosion in a win at Oregon State.

“It was like he had been rejuvenated. He was quicker, he was faster – everything was back to normal,” Whittingham said. “He was a different person when he came back and maybe realized how much he missed it.”

Whittingham believes it when Williams says he won’t walk out on the game he loves again. He says he’s done with painkillers. He says he’s happy. If an NFL team wants him to continue counseling, Williams says, he’ll do it.

The memory remains, but Kylee is now part of why Williams hopes teams will believe in him.

“People make it a big deal that I quit on the team. To me, it was necessary,” Williams said. “I was learning to come to grips with the fact that it wasn’t my fault. I’m 23 years old now, and I can’t blame myself for something that occurred 10 years ago, no matter how painful or traumatic it was.

“It would be bigger to honor her in a much more meaningful way.”

Follow Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero.

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