NEW ORLEANS — At the end of a long journey through hell, from the violent horrors of Liberty City in Miami to a father who beat and abused him and his kid brother, to a thorny two-year nightmare on Rose Hill, Cary Williams stands on the doorstep of a heaven maybe even he could not have imagined.
He is standing by himself now inside the Superdome on Media Day, a short distance from the podiums reserved for his marquee Ravens teammates, when an old wound that threatened to shatter his NFL dream is unwittingly reopened.
It is almost incomprehensible that an immature young man who couldn’t cut it at Fordham is 60 minutes from hoisting the Lombardi Trophy and earning a ring.
From Rose Hill to the top of the world.
But here he is.
“I think they had a problem with looking at talent,” the Ravens cornerback tells The Post, and snickers.
“They” means Fordham football once upon a time.
“As far as I’m concerned, those are days where I learned how to deal with the political aspects of football, and that was it,” he goes on. “As far as I’m concerned, I felt like I was one of the better corners we had on the team, but I didn’t play. It was times my rookie year where I had NFL scouts saying that I could possibly be in the NFL if I continue to play the way I did — but I couldn’t start at Fordham. So to me, that was baffling. That was one of the things that really just got up under my skin because I felt like I was better and I knew I was better and the NFL scouts said I was better, but I just wasn’t playing at Fordham.”
The year was 2004, the coach was Ed Foley, who did not return a voice message. Williams says it was his refusal to take his helmet off during warm-ups on a 10-degree day that led to his dismissal.
“I ended up getting suspended because Coach Foley deemed me as a player that was not a team player or whatever,” Williams said.
“That was one of the lowest points where it seemed like it was almost like a setup to see if he could get me out of there. But everything happens for a reason, man, and I really don’t want to talk about Fordham because Fordham ain’t get me here. I’ve been working my butt off for the last five years trying to get to this point man, and now that I made it, I really don’t want to talk about Fordham University no more.”
Then he did. It turns out a Fordham assistant, Keita Malloy, had worked at Washburn University, a tiny school in Topeka, and guided Williams there.
“It was no other team out there that was interested, man,” Williams said. “I even tried to go to Hofstra University. … I actually had a scholarship on the table, and they [were] just like, ‘Nah, we can’t do it ’cause we heard some things about you,’ so I guess guys from Fordham was talking to Hofstra, trying to tell ’em that, ‘Oh he’s not a team player.’ Whatever.”
During summers at Washburn, Williams worked at Target and FedEx and Frito Lay ($9 an hour) to make ends meet. The Titans drafted him in the seventh round in 2008 and the Ravens plucked him off Tennessee’s practice squad in November 2009.
Did he ever have a Super Bowl dream?
“I just wanted to make it to the NFL, man, to be honest with you,” Williams said.
You don’t dare dream too big in Liberty City.
“Childhood friends, you lose ’em to either to gunfights, or you either lose ’em to drug abuse or something like that, man, and it’s terrible, and you pray for those people that you lost and you just gotta continue to press forward,” Williams said.
It was some battle. His mother was schizophrenic, confined to mental institutions. His father, Cary Williams Sr., went much too far with the discipline, and so his cousin Calvin Golson, an ordained minister, moved swiftly to adopt him when he was 12, and his brother Ronald was 10.
And yet his father will be at the Super Bowl.
“At the end of the day you gotta forgive and forget, man,” Williams said. “I know I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect anybody else to be perfect. After a while, you gotta give people a second chance, man. I don’t want my daughter to grow up not knowing who her grandfather is.”
He is a 6-foot-1 corner who will be a free agent after turning down a three-year, $15 million offer before the season.
“Because I was essentially betting on God,” Williams said.
And he will keep the faith when Randy Moss lines up in front of him.
“I’m not scared,” Cary Williams said.
From Rose Hill to the top of the football world.
steve.serby@nypost.com