During his senior year of high school, Javonte Williams was prepared to stop playing football.

“I was telling my mom, ‘I think I’m just going to give football up,’” Williams said after UNC’s win over Western Carolina in 2018. “I didn’t have any good offers that I thought I deserved.”

A Wallace, NC, native, Williams was a standout player at Wallace-Rose Hill High School and helped lead the Bulldogs to four-straight state championships. He got it done in the classroom, too, graduating with a 4.6 GPA and was the valedictorian of his class.

Williams played linebacker until his senior year, averaging an impressive 16 tackles per game during his junior campaign. Going into his final season, he decided to switch to running back, a decision that would ultimately change the course of his life.

His final game as a Bulldog came in the 2017 Class 2-A state championship game in Kenan Stadium. Going into it, Williams did not have a single offer from a Division 1 program, which was playing the biggest factor in him considering giving up the sport.

The day after Wallace-Rose Hill’s 35-28 overtime win over Reidsville, Williams took his official visit to UNC. After checking out the facilities, he sat in former UNC Coach Larry Fedora’s office and was finally offered the scholarship he had always wanted.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward some three-and-a-half years and Williams is one of, if not the, top running backs going into the 2021 NFL Draft after a few standout seasons as a Tar Heel.

For Williams, his journey from relatively unknown recruit from a small town of just under 4,000 people to potential first round pick feels like it was meant to be.

“Just coming from where I come from, not that many people get a chance to be in the position that I'm in now,” Williams said in a recent interview. “I was very under recruited coming out of high school, but I feel like everything is a blessing and everything happens for a reason.

“Honestly, I just feel like this is my destiny.”

To understand where Williams is now, one must understand the journey that came before it.

Williams arrived in Chapel Hill in January 2018 as a 2-star prospect, playing in 11 games during his freshman campaign. He carried the ball 43 times for 224 yards and five touchdowns, particularly shining in UNC’s last two games of the season when he ran for a combined 176 yards and four touchdowns against Western Carolina and NC State.

Still, it was a bad year for the Carolina program as it won just two games, leading to Fedora’s firing after seven seasons at the helm. Mack Brown replaced Fedora several days later.

And whether Brown knew it when he arrived or not, he was set to inherit two of the most dangerous backs in college football.

Going into his sophomore campaign in 2019, Williams was the Tar Heels’ No. 2 back behind junior Michael Carter, who had played in 20 games and run for more than 1,000 yards in his first two seasons at UNC. Current Buffalo Bills running back Antonio Williams was the team’s third option, illustrating the room’s impressive depth.

Williams credits those two guys for helping bring him along during his first two years at Carolina.

“The way I feel like I developed that is through competition,” Williams said. “Having guys like Antonio Williams, Michael Carter and Jordon Brown here before me. When I got here, just seeing them and learning from them, taking little pieces of their game and incorporating it into mine, I feel like that's one way I developed it.”

All three would go on to split reps in Brown’s first year back at the helm, with Williams rushing for 933 yards and five touchdowns in 13 games.

According to Pro Football Focus, Williams ranked fifth among Power 5 running backs with an 89.8 grade on offense as a sophomore. He also ranked seventh in the ACC with 71.8 rushing yards per game and eighth with 5.6 per carry. Not too bad for a player who had just one Division 1 offer out of high school.

While Williams showed glimpses of just how good he could be, he was set to put up even bigger numbers as a junior, firmly cementing himself as one of the top backs in the country.

Playing in 11 games, Williams rushed for 1,140 yards on 157 carries for a 7.3 yards per carry average. He also caught 25 passes for 305 yards and finished with over 100 rushing yards in six games, including 236 in the regular season-finale win at Miami, which was his final game as a Tar Heel.

Even more impressive, Williams racked up a combined 22 touchdowns, 19 of which came on the ground, surpassing UNC legend Don McCauley’s record for touchdowns in a season.

This led to a ton of individual accolades, with the junior back being selected to the AP All-ACC first team, AP All-American second team, All-ACC second team and the PFF ACC Player of the Year. Williams would also be voted the team’s offensive MVP and was a semifinalist for the Doak Walker and Maxwell Awards.

Watch Williams’ UNC career on film and it is easy to see why he is projected as a potential first-round pick in this year’s draft. From blocking to running to catching, the 5-foot-10, 212-pound bruiser can get it done all over the field, which has been a big part of his pitch to NFL teams throughout the pre-draft process.

“Honestly, I feel like just being able to do it all,” Williams said. “Run, pass, catch, block. Not having so much wear and tear on my body and also age. I feel like that plays a lot into it because the average player in the NFL doesn’t last that long.”

A nice and relatively quiet kid, at least in front of the media, Williams also wants coaches at the next level to realize what kind of person they would be getting outside of football, too.

“I feel like I'm an even better person off the field, just somebody you don't have to worry about getting in trouble,” Williams said. “Always doing what’s right, always on time and just trying to give back anyway that I can. Whatever that may be, I feel like I'm gonna do that.”

During Carolina’s Pro Day on March 29, Williams continued to show NFL scouts why outlets like PFF regard him as the top running back prospect in this year’s draft.

While Williams’ 4.55 40-yard dash time was not anything to write home about, his 22 bench press reps, 36-inch vertical and 6.93-second three-cone drill time showed just how strong, quick, and explosive he is as a runner.

“I just wanted to go out and compete in front of the scouts and let them see me for the first time in person,” Williams said after his pro day workout. “Honestly, I feel like I had a pretty good day overall.”

With the start of the NFL Draft less than a week away, some of the most recent mock drafts have Williams projected as an early second round pick. And, of the five former Tar Heels looking to get selected this year, Williams is projected to be the first one to go.

Looking back, Williams’ journey to now is quite the story, but it is far from over yet. In fact, it is just getting started, and he’s more than ready for whatever opportunity comes his way.

“I try not to get caught up too much into the rankings or anything like that,” Williams said. “I just keep my head down and go to work like I'm supposed to.”