Williams to miss first six games
In his first comments to reporters since Avantae Williams was reinstated, Miami Hurricanes coach Manny Diaz said the second-year safety will be out for the team’s first six games of the season, which starts Saturday against Alabama at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
“Avantae hasn’t practiced, run or done anything physically,” Diaz said Monday. “He’s just going to work with our strength and conditioning staff for the next two weeks. It’d be unfair to dunk him right into the middle of practices. The guy did miss a training camp. We have to take that into account.”
The Hurricanes officially reinstated Williams on Sunday after the felony charges that resulted in his dismissal were dropped on Aug. 20.
Williams was dismissed from the program on July 22 after he was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated battery against his pregnant ex-girlfriend earlier that week, according to Miami-Dade County’s arrest records. Aggravated battery on a pregnant woman is a felony in Florida.
A copy of the arrest affidavit from July stated Williams got into a “verbal dispute” with his ex-girlfriend on July 21 before telling her to leave the apartment they lived in together. The police report stated Williams grabbed her multiple times, threw her to the floor and threw her to the ground outside of their residence, causing her “to hit her head.” Williams’ ex-girlfriend, according to the police report, was transported to a hospital for further evaluation after sustaining “multiple” bruises to her arms and neck and having two broken fingernails.
The final memo on the case, which was obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, said Williams’ ex-girlfriend was recanting and no longer cooperating with prosecutors, so the case was being closed.
“Obviously the situation changed with the way the case was handled,” Diaz said. “Those decisions aren’t made by one individual. There’s a lot of communication with the administration at the university level and the administration at the athletic’s department level. And really what became our focus was what can we best do for Avantae going forward? That’s really what we’ve put in a plan about.
“We want this to be educational to be able to affect Avantae down the road more so than anything we can teach on the football field. Some of the things in terms of the mentorship, educational opportunities and group he’s going to participate in — he’s got to meet those benchmarks to get back up to play.”
Williams was originally suspended from all team activities the morning of July 22 before being dismissed later that day, which Diaz believed was the best decision at the time.
“I always say, you make the best decision at the time given the information you have at the time you have to make it,” he said. “Talking to the leaders at the university, if we had a chance to go through the whole thing again, I think we would’ve done the exact same thing.
“At the end of the day, we’re still back where we are now. Whether it’s suspension or dismissal, now we’re talking about semantics. Given the change in information, we felt we had a chance to update what we thought about the situation and explore an avenue going forward.”
Williams was back on Miami’s official online football roster Sunday evening, reassigned the No. 15 and listed at 6 feet, 198 pounds.
He sat out his true freshman season in 2020 due to unspecified “chronic and lingering medical issues” that Miami’s medical staff found in the preseason, according to Diaz.
Williams was medically cleared for football activities in March and participated in spring practices. The first game he would be eligible to play would be the Hurricanes’ home matchup against NC State on Oct. 23.
Bubba Bolden and Gurvan Hall were listed as the Hurricanes starting safeties for their matchup against the Crimson Tide, with true freshmen Kamren Kinchens and James Williams listed as backups.
Second-year safety Brian Balom, who was expected to be the Hurricanes third option at safety, isn’t expected to play this season due to an undisclosed injury and Amari Carter will play striker after previously being a safety, meaning Miami will look for Avantae Williams to fill the team’s safety depth once he’s allowed to return to the field.
Second-year safety Keshawn Washington is also an option at the positon.
“Our goal is to make the best Avantae Williams we possibly can and that’s why we gave him the avenue back,” Diaz said. “There’s some things we want him to be able to accomplish that we think would help him. And by helping him, that ultimately helps us as a football program.”