Second in an 11-part series. Next up is the wide receivers.
Ray Davies spoke with purpose, like someone who knew where he was going.
There is no question in his mind.
Just certainty.
If you’ve been through a lot to get to this point, failure isn’t an option or even a possibility.
The Kentucky running back grew up in foster care, his parents were in and out of prison, and he spent time homeless in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley area.
Several high schools and three universities followed.
It’s all part of the journey that took him this far, from the entrance to the 2024 NFL Draft to a script that would become a heartwarming Hollywood movie.
“Statistically, I’m 1 percent of the way out of the situation I was in, unfortunately, but I still made it,” the projected second-day draft pick said at the scouting combine in February. “I’m not doing this for myself. I’m doing it for a lot of other kids who are in situations like that, if not worse. Knowing that I can provide that and be a speaker for kids who don’t have that is what keeps me going every day and what keeps me fighting.”
Davis, 24, is a long shot among long shots.
By the age of eight, he was placed in foster care.
When he was 14 years old, he lived in a homeless shelter with 12 other siblings.
According to The Athletic, when a foster home became available for the two dogs, he offered to stay.
Davis was able to graduate from eighth grade after being briefly taken in by former teachers Ben and Alexa Kraus.
Later, Laura Banks, the mother of one of his basketball teammates, befriended him.
She initially served as his temporary guardian and then became his educational authority.
Eventually, with Banks’ help, Davis enrolled at Trinity Pawling, a boarding school in Pawling, New York, at the age of 15.
It was around that time that his father, Raymond Davis, began to rebuild his life and become involved in his son’s life again.
The Davis brothers won custody of their son, allowing Ray to move across the country.
It was there that his athletic career began to take off.
He played multiple sports, including basketball, baseball, and track and field, but football was his calling, a sport in which his father excelled as a Galileo High School Sports Hall of Famer.
He did not have enough credits to qualify for college, so he spent his prep year at Blair Academy (New Jersey), where he scored 35 touchdowns that season.
From there, Davis played two seasons at Temple, two more at Vanderbilt and last year at Kentucky.
The 5-foot-8, 211-pound back was productive with each stop, setting career bests in rushing yards (1,129), receiving yards (323) and total touchdowns (21) for the Wildcats.
His stock rose with excellent results in the nation’s best conferences.
“He didn’t test that well, but he’s a great football player,” Sportskeeda.com’s leading NFL draft expert, Tony Poulin, told The Post in a phone interview. “He’s not the tallest player in the world, but he’s an inside ball carrier with strong rushing power. He has an aggressive style and catches the ball well out of the backfield. He I think he would be a very nice complementary back. …He’s also a tough ball carrier north-south, breaks a lot of tackles and has good quickness in short areas. I think [his pass-catching ability] It’s an element of his game that makes him more appealing. ”
Life is going well these days.
His father occupies a major part of his life.
He is expected to be drafted.
But that doesn’t mean Davis doesn’t think about what it took to get there.
Without everything that came before, he wouldn’t have reached the top of this dream.
He also wants to be a role model for those less fortunate.
“I want to be a great running back, but ultimately I just want to be a name that people remember,” he said. “Every day I wake up and look at that story and there are kids sitting there who want to play college football or basketball or some other sport, but they might not have the ability to do it. They may not have the academic part, but they have the fight and courage because someone else did it.
“I want to be known as someone who kept fighting, tried to beat the system, bet on myself, didn’t give in to any adversity, didn’t falter under pressure, attacked head on. That’s how I attack life. This is the way to do it.”
