BROTHERS IN ARMS NFL DRAFTEE PAUL WILLIAMS PAYS HOMAGE TO LATE BROTHER CURTIS WITH A TATTOO, BUT HIS GREATEST TRIBUTE TO HIM WOULD BE FLOURISHING AS A RECEIVER WITH THE TENNESSEE TITANS.

Byline: BILLY WITZ

Staff Writer

As his mind wandered during class one day, Paul Williams began to doodle on a piece of notebook paper.

He began with a thick wooden cross, detailing it with grain. Then he drew a jersey, with the number 25 and the name "Williams" across the shoulders, and draped it over the crucifix. Above it, in cursive, he inscribed the initials C.W.

It's a drawing that now adorns Williams' right bicep.

The ink, several years old, is starting to fade, but its meaning is not.

"It says to me I'll never forget my brother," Williams said of the tattoo. "He's smiling down on me. Every day before a game, I'd pray that Curtis had a good game, too, because I knew he was playing on God's team."

It has been more than six years since Curtis Williams, a safety for the University of Washington, was paralyzed from the neck down while trying to make a tackle. He died 19 months later.

As Paul Williams, a former Fresno State receiver who was a third-round draft pick of the Tennessee Titans, spent last weekend in LosAngeles to do photo shoots and attend promotional parties with more than 30 other NFLrookies, it was hard to imagine any of them having a better understanding of the risks and rewards that pro football offers.

Football has handed him hisgreatest loss, that of his closest sibling, a big brother in every sense. But it has also provided opportunities for Williams and some of his four other brothers. One of them, J.D. Williams, started three Super Bowls at cornerback forthe Buffalo Bills, is now an assistant coach at the University of Washington and is someone who Paul calls his guiding light.

"I was mad at the game of football for taking my brother away, but I love the game because it's helped my family so much," Williams said during a break between photography sessions at the Coliseum. "You think about it every now and then, but for the most part, I play the game the way it's supposed to be played. I realize now it was a fluke accident, what happened to Curtis. It could have happened to anybody, so don't be mad at the game."

Williams remembers all the details of that rainy late-October night at Stanford, his family having made the drive from their home just outside Fresno. Late in the third quarter, Curtis Williams, known as a fierce hitter, charged into the hole to hit Stanford's heavyweight tailback, Kerry Carter.

"At first, it was kind of humorous," Williams recalled, noting that his brother was run over by Carter when their helmets hit. "I thought, 'Curtis is going to be mad.' Then he laid there, and it was going through my mind that he must have hurt himself kind of bad. Just the different stages of it -- it went from funny to like, 'Oh, is he OK?,' to maybe he knocked himself out. Then the ambulance comes on the field and it's kind of surreal."

At the hospital, doctors told the family that swelling prevented them from knowing just how bad the injury was. But they would know soon enough. Curtis Williams stayed in a coma for several weeks.

"The whole time I was wondering, 'How are they going to tell him when he wakes up that he's never going to walk again?'" Williams said.

That Washington team rallied around Curtis, using him as an inspiration in its run to the Rose Bowl during the 2000 season, and Curtis -- with a team of nurses and in a specially equipped plane -- was flown to Los Angeles, where he visited the locker room and then watched the game from a press-box suite.

Meanwhile, the task of caring for Curtis fell on the Williams family. Their mother, Viola, was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, and their father, Donnie, had a history of heart trouble. The eldest son, David, took Curtis in, a task made even more difficult by having to battle insurance companies to provide around-the-clock care.

In the middle of this maelstrom was an adolescent trying to make sense of it all. Paul, the youngest of eight children, went to football practice two days after his brother's injury and was wondering if he should be there, a debate he played over in his head for several months.

Then Curtis told him: "If I can't play, I want you to play."

Paul, a junior in high school at the time, was being recruited by Washington and UCLA, but he called Fresno State and told them he wanted to stay home so his brother could see him play.

Curtis never got that chance, dying just before Paul's high school graduation. Then, twoyears later, both of their parents died -- his mother succumbing to Alzheimer's and his father to a heart attack.

"The stress of Curtis and what my mom was going through -- it took its toll on our family," Williams said. "But everybody's in a better place."

Williams, at 6-foot-1, 205pounds, has the size, speed and hands to flourish in the NFL, much like he did as a junior, when he emerged as an All-Western Athletic Conference receiver with a team-leading 17.0 yards per catch and seven touchdowns, including a 20-yarder in Fresno State's near-upset of No.1-ranked USC.

But knee and hip injuries limited him to seven games last season, leaving him without the track record that could have made him a first-round pick, like J.D.

Nevertheless, Williams is looking forward to going to Tennessee. He might have landed in one of the four cities where J.D. played. He might have wound up in other NFL ports, where he'd work alongside Curtis' old coach at Washington, Rick Neuheisel, now the offensive coordinator in Baltimore; or Curtis' college teammates, such as defensive tackle Larry Tripplett in Buffalo; or Marques Tuiasosopo with the New York Jets.

Or in Washington with Carter.

In Tennessee, there is no such connection.

"It's good," said Williams, who will compete for playing time after the departure to free agency of the Titans' top tworeceivers, Drew Bennett and Bobby Wade. "It gives me a whole new start. Nobody really knows who I am. Going through Fresno, everybody knew Curtis, everybody knew J.D. It's kind of a chance to start my own name."

Not that he's on his own. If he needs company, or some reassurance, he can just look down at his arm.

"Every time I suit up, every time I'm in a football environment, he's my motivation to go through everything, to push me through hard times," Williams said. "He'd love to be here right now."

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Former Fresno State wide receiver Paul Williams holds a jersey belonging to his late brother Curtis.

Darrell Wong/Fresno Bee

(2) Injuries limited wide receiver Paul Williams, right, to just sevengames in his senior season at Fresno State.

Kurt Hegre/Fresno Bee