One Williams (Harris, of Lynn) paves the way for another (Andre)

CHESTNUT HILL – Perhaps you’ve heard of Andre Williams. He’s the running back from Boston College who, in the past two weeks, has put up 602 yards on the ground in his late-season bid to become part of the Heisman Trophy conversation.Chances are one of the bigger names will win it, but at the very least, Williams, who eclipsed the 2,000-yard mark (he has 2,073 heading into this weekend’s game at Syracuse) in last Saturday’s win over Maryland, has been officially named a finalist for the Doak Walker Award – which is given to the nation’s best running back.Now … here’s a better one.Have you heard of Harris Williams? Lynn’s Harris Williams?He’s an offensive guard on the Boston College line, tasked every week with blocking for the aforementioned Andre Williams … helping him pile up those yards and accolades.Unless you’re a BC aficionado, you wouldn’t have any way of knowing much about Williams, who grew up on Endicott Street in Lynn. That’s because even though he grew up in Lynn, he spent so little time there he doesn’t have many friends, or know many people, there.His parents work in Boston, and decided, when Williams was ready to go to school, that they’d rather have him closer to them than in the Lynn school system. So, he spent his formative years at the Park School in Brookline.”Made for a tough commute,” he said. “It was an hour each way. But it gave me a lot of time to study and do homework in the car.”When it came time to go to high school, he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his older brother, who went to Phillips Academy in Andover.”I knew I wanted to board,” he said.But he didn’t get into Phillips. Or Exeter. Or any of the other local prep schools. He did, however, get into Proctor Academy in Andover, N.H. And that’s the first time he ever played football for real.”I was always too big to play Pop Warner, or any other youth football team I tried out for,” he said. “I played soccer growing up, but I used to keep getting called for fouls, because we’d be running after the ball, and we’d collide.”When I got to high school, my father told me I’d get my shot to play football, and I did.”He did it well enough so that by the time he was a senior, he’d committed to Stanford University. But then, a combination of bad luck and worse timing put the kibosh on that.”I’d broken my foot junior year (at Proctor), but I didn’t know it was broken,” he said. “I thought I had a bad sprain. Played baseball on it … and then, Stanford wanted to meet the commits. I went out there, and next thing you know, we’re strapping on the pads and going against each other.”I didn’t do well,” he said. “I was playing on a broken foot, and I was kind of out of football shape. I got home, and three days later, they told me they were pulling the scholarship.”It only got worse. The break was bad enough that doctors had to put two screws in the foot, and he couldn’t play his senior season.”So here I am, senior season, no scholarship, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said. “One of the schools that recruited me was BC. I gave them a call, and found out one of their linemen had gone to Wisconsin, and there was a spot.”Needless to say it’s worked out well.”This is kind of like O-Line U,” he said. “Stanford is quarterback U, this is O-Line U.”It should go without saying he loves blocking for his Williams counterpart.”It’s awesome to see,” says the 6-3, 298-pound Williams. “We’ll all be blocking our guys and there will be that one guy left. He’ll give him a fake, or hit him, and he’s off. He’s an easy guy to block for. He makes us look good … and we make him look good.”After Boston College’s win over Army, Eagles coach Steve Addazio commented that “it’s nice to see BC getting back to being the BC I remember … a run-it-up-the-gut, no-holds barred offense.”Williams concurs. In fact, Williams likes everything about the new regime at The Heights. He played sparingly his first year of eligibility, and then he broke his ankle midway through the 2012