Marcus Williams was always determined to embrace both parts of his role as a student-athlete.
The Baltimore Ravens safety certainly shined in athletics. Along with football, he starred in basketball and track and field at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Eastvale, California, before becoming a two-time All-Pac 12 player at the University of Utah.
Like the "student-athlete" title suggests, however, schoolwork came first for Williams.
"I take it very seriously, if I compete on the field, I can compete in the classroom," Williams told NBC Local. "So academics comes first."
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Williams had a 4.0 GPA in high school and went on to become a two-time All-Pac 12 Academic at Utah. He departed Utah after his junior season and was selected by the New Orleans Saints in the second round of the 2017 NFL Draft.
It's been nearly a decade since Williams was in the classroom as a student-athlete. Now, the NFL vet is helping the next generation excel on and off the field.
Williams founded the Marked As Winners Foundation as a way to promote mental, academic and physical abilities for underserved youth.
NFL
"I've always been the one I want to give back. I mean, I feel like that's my purpose in life, to give back to others, to give back to my community," Williams said. "And being able to have this platform that I do, it is definitely a better position to help me give back to my community, give back to the youth, and whoever I can ... When I see others happy, it makes me happy."
The foundation held its sixth annual youth football clinic in June, along with its third annual youth cheerleading camp. It has also started an annual celebrity golf tournament in 2022.
When it comes to academics, Marked As Winners offered 10 scholarships to 2023-24 college-bound high school seniors in California's Riverside and San Bernardino County areas. Four of those were allocated for "scholar-athletes," four "academic excellence" scholarships were set aside for students with a 3.5 GPA or higher and two were for young men or women with a documented learning disability who are "overcoming the odds."
Williams credits his resiliency for getting him to where he is today, and it's another value he wants to pass along to student-athletes involved in his foundation.
"People always told me that I can't do something or I'm too little, or I'm not strong enough, or I'm not fast enough. And even when I was doing good, there were still doubters," Williams told NBC Local. "But I really didn't care about what people said. I knew who I was. I knew that whatever comes my way, whatever adversity I faced, that I'm going to overcome it. So that's why that's my message to all the youth that you can overcome any adversity you may be knocked down 100 times, but you could get up 101, however many times you need to, but you just never give up."
Williams is set to begin his eighth NFL season and third with the Ravens, and his team faces a daunting challenge right out of the gates. The Ravens will visit Patrick Mahomes and the two-time-defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL Kickoff Game this Thursday on NBC and Peacock. Williams isn't one to back down from a challenge, though.
"Don't ever let anyone say you can't do something. You could do whatever you set your mind to. You may face of adversity, but everyone in life does. And if you feel down, you feel like you can't go anymore, just know somebody may be doing worse than you, and you know everything is going to come out being good.
"Be optimistic because at the end of the day, everything will work out."
