Survival Mode: The Power of Ray Davis’ Pain
Homeless as a child, the Bills rookie is loving life in WNY. But the thing is? Ray Davis never wants to change: “I didn’t get here off luck. I got here off straight grinding my ass.”
ORCHARD PARK, NY — Once he was finished mashing the New York Jets defense for 152 yards on 23 touches, this round 5-foot-8, 208-pound mound of pain put on a cowboy hat and appeared to be fully basking in the Monday Night Football glow. MetLife Stadium was nearly cleared out by the time he skipped over to a pocket of Bills fans in the corner, raised his arms and screamed, “Let’s go!”
Face splattered in eye black, Ray Davis was the story on Sportscenter that night.
But when he took his seat on the team’s charter home, he stopped smiling. Stopped celebrating. The Buffalo Bills’ rookie running back did not treat the flight across New York State as a party. Davis immediately rewatched the Bills’ narrow 23-20 victory in full. His plane landed. He got back to his home in Hamburg at around 3 a.m., and he didn’t even grant himself 15 minutes to relax. Davis watched the TV copy of the game. His Dad records all games on the family’s Xfinity.
Each of those 23 times the football was in his hands, Davis hunted for yards left on the field.
At some point, he slept. In a bed. And he never takes such comfort for granted.
No running back in the NFL grew up on the fringes of society quite like this. There’s a good chance you’ve heard about the San Francisco kid who couch-surfed, shuttled through foster care and spent many nights inside a homeless shelter. When Davis says he’s thankful for every day here at One Bills Drive, the sentiment is sincere. His entire childhood, Davis had zero control over the most basic human needs we take for granted. The worst of the worst memories remain fresh in the mind of the 25-year-old.
“Now that I actually have control over my ability to be here every day?” Davis says. “I think back on it, like ‘You were doing all types of stuff to survive.”
The mentality sticks.
Which is both blessing and curse.
NFL players are forever treated as commodities. All of us overuse the term “survival” to explain the volatile lifestyle of living out of hotels, uprooting families and being cut four times over. With Davis, it’s not hyperbole. He lived out of a duffel bag. That’s why it doesn’t matter that he’s been the No. 1 back at three different Division I programs or that he was drafted by a Super Bowl contender in the fourth round. Davis is wholly incapable of a deep exhale after his best moments on a football field because — at his core — he’s still that nine-year-old kid changing his baby brother’s diaper. Insecurity is inevitable.
Even when it was obvious that Davis would have a role during training camp, he’d speak to teammates as if he wasn’t even going to make the team. He’d begin conversations with “If I make the 53…”
Says Davis: “Because my whole life, I’m so used to having to jump from place to place to place. I never instilled that confidence.”
Rare for anyone at this level. Let alone alpha-male running backs.
The blessing, however, far outweighs the curse. All of this “added fuel to the fire.”
Tomorrow was never guaranteed.
“That’s the best way I thrive in life,” Davis says. “To think that nothing is going to go right for me.”
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His full name is actually Re’Mahn Walter Zhamar Jamar Davis. Nobody could seem to pronounce “Re-Mahn” correctly, so he adopted Ray. (“Short, simple, sweet.”) Instantly, Ray Davis sounded like an old-school running back to him. A name that’d roll off John Facenda’s tongue as the trumpets and trombones to Sam Spence’s composition blare. You can picture the grainy, yet majestic slow-motion footage. Everyone knows “College Ray Davis.” Now, he’s hoping “NFL Ray Davis” catches on. Right now, he’s the No. 2 back behind starter James Cook and moments like his 63-yard touchdown reception against the Miami Dolphins remind everyone that he’ll also need the ball as Western New York freezes over.
Davis never consciously thinks about those homeless nights.
But everything you see? Everything defenders feel? All of it is a direct reflection.
“For me, I’ve got to run hard,” Davis says. “Everybody’s counting me out. Everybody’s told me I couldn’t do this — too fat, too slow, won’t make it. There’s so many things that I’ve heard. It was not supposed to happen. And when I run out there, I let people feel me. I let motherf--kers know it’s a long game. It’s a long, long game. I may be short, fat. Whatever you want to call me, you’re going to have to face me for four straight quarters and — at the end of the game — I’m going to earn your respect. You’re going to give me my respect.”
His voice crackles. His blue eyes lock in.
He’s not done. It’s easy to see why a team at the precipice of a championship needed to draft this man.
“I didn’t get here off luck. I got here off straight grinding my ass. So y’all going to find out what it feels like for 24 years of going through the bullshit and the ringer and y’all going to experience it for four straight quarters.”
The past
On Sunday night, the Bills host the San Francisco 49ers on NBC. The sight of scarlet and gold will undoubtedly dust off memories. Ray Davis grew up one Hail Mary toss from Candlestick Park as a kid. And back at Bret Harte Elementary School, each home football game, his gym teacher would open up the school parking lot for fans. It was Davis’ job to post up on the corner and wave in prospective parkers for $24.
From the grand total, Davis would receive a cut of about $50. He’d use a few dollars to buy candy for himself and his younger sister but most all of the dough went toward groceries and diapers. Because not only was it Ray’s responsibility to walk his sister to school. Early as 9 years old, Ray changed diapers ‘round the clock. He had no qualms, no hesitancy, no choice. Because that’s the thing about a full diaper. You’re either all-in or all-out.
They’re messy. They’re relentless.
“You’ve got to know how to wipe ass!” Davis says.
He’d miss school for long stretches of time simply to take care of his siblings.
“I was a father young. I didn’t have a childhood. I was man of the house.”
All he knew about his biological father was that he was in prison. Nothing more. He’d write him letters that were never returned. Once he started playing Pop Warner, coaches started calling him “Little Ray” and he soon heard all about Dad breaking O.J. Simpson’s touchdown record at Galileo High School. Early on, he lived with his mother. But she was just a kid herself. Mom became pregnant with Davis at 14 years old and gave birth at 15. Looking back, he knows how fortunate he is to be alive. That’s why he calls his mother “a beautiful woman” with “a beautiful soul” and vows to never say a bad word about her even though, yes, it’s true she exited his life.
He slept on his grandmother’s living room floor for a while and became a ward of the state at age 8.
“When you’re young and before you hit 23, 25, you’ve got three kids?” he says. “I would always forgive her. My Mom tried to give us the best life she could. Unfortunately, the resources were never there. The help wasn’t there. If you put my Mom in a better position, we would’ve had a better life. But this is the life that we have. So there’s no going back, no looking back.”
Because he also knows everything that happened next is why he’s standing here as a running back in the NFL. Over the years, he’s been opening up about made-for-movie life. Zak Keefer detailed Davis’ rise in full for The Athletic. For a long time, Davis admits he was reluctant to tear open these wounds.
Frankly, it’s taken him a long time to trust anybody. Period. For good reason.
Once Davis was ejected into foster care, life became a matter of survival. He has no clue how many different sets of parents took him in. (“I lived with almost every race, I can tell you that.”) Quickly, he learned he couldn’t trust adults claiming to have his best interests at heart. A therapist would inform Davis that he could say anything he wants about his experience and it’d never get back to his foster-care parents. That was the code, unless a child was a danger to himself or others.
He was honest. He bared his soul. Then, suddenly, he’d see two cops at the front door.
Once they left?
“Now, you’re getting your ass whupped by your parents,” Davis says. “I’ve learned to not trust and I think that just went with me my whole life.”
This sequence played out several times. Some of his foster parents were fine. Others were abusive, others had different “motives.”
In all, he recalls spending three different stints at the homeless shelter: age six, eight and 12.
He never knew how long foster parents even wanted him around. Eventually, he’d get the two-week notice and need to scramble for somewhere else to sleep. A friend’s couch. A friend of a friend’s floor. Which, it turned out, was a hell of a lot better than being flatly kicked out entirely. When he was in sixth grade, a foster parent put in a two-week notice without even telling him. He found out that 14th day.
“So imagine you’re sitting with your social worker and they’re like, ‘Did you pack your bags?’” Davis says. “That was the lowest for me: Being like, ‘Where the hell am I going to go?’”
He had no clue.
He started calling everybody he could.
Selling drugs would’ve been a logical next step. He needed money. He needed support — from anyone. But he also knew that was the route his father took, and it landed him in prison. He knew that lifestyle was killing off so many of his closest friends and cousins. On gamedays, Davis wears a chain featuring a picture of a cousin named “Vermont.” (He declines to offer a last name.) Later in life, in 2020, Vermont tried to rob someone in broad daylight and it backfired. The person swiped Vermont’s gun and shot him dead.
In his hood, that’s how your story too often ends.
As a juvenile drifter, he was ultra-, ultra-vulnerable. Thankfully, word got out that Davis had athletic talent and nobody tried tempting him into this world. Nor was Davis interested. Instead, he feverishly called everybody he possibly could when that final foster parent essentially hurled him into the streets. The man who finally said “yes” was Ben Klaus, his teacher in third and fifth grade. Klaus opened up his small one-bedroom apartment in downtown San Francisco even though he was engaged.
When Ben and Alexa got married a year later in Chicago, the 14-year-old Davis was there. Patrick Dowley, his Big Brother Big Sisters mentor, paid for the flight to Chicago, taught him how to knot a tie, everything. Then, Davis gave a speech nobody present will ever forget. Nervous? Not at all. Davis knew the family. Davis joined Ben’s family for Thanksgiving dinner once in Fresno, Calif., with the state’s approval. Still, the experience was life-changing. “Holy fuck, I'm doing this,” he remembers telling himself. The speech remains saved in the Notes app on his phone.
He stayed with Ben and Alexa for most of three years. His GPA soared.
Soon, the mother of an AAU basketball teammate, Lora Banks, took an interest in him.
Banks became his legal education guardian, a voice to help him think about life beyond high school. Simultaneously, Raymond Davis emerged from prison and wanted to reconnect with his son. Banks and her husband invited him over for dinner and the two Rays began building a relationship that never existed.
No wonder Davis describes all of these people in his life as saviors. They entered his life at the exact moment he needed them. They saw potential he didn’t see himself.
“The trajectory of my life before I met them was really going downhill,” Davis says. “And I was happy I met them at an age where they instilled faith in me that I didn’t have. And it was like you got to see it through. That was just the mindset: ‘You got to see it through.’”
With Banks’ help, he started thinking about his future. A prep school one hour north of New York City was interested in offering him a basketball scholarship. He loved the Trinity-Pawling campus. In passing he mentioned to the basketball coach that he also played football. And whenever Davis’ life becomes a blockbuster hit, the climactic scene will take place inside a court room. Before he could relocate across the country, Davis needed California’s permission. He was still a ward of the state. More specifically, he needed to explain to a judge why his biological father could resume custody — that was required to trigger such a move.
To his shock, an attorney showed up in opposition. The attorney argued that Davis’ support system was right there in San Francisco. If things went south in NYC, then what? So imagine being Ray Davis. Here was his one opportunity to finally bust free from homelessness and poverty to make a life for himself and another adult figure was holding him back. He was only 16 years old, but he was also mature beyond his years. Judge Catherine Lyons gave Davis the chance to speak on his own behalf.
His words were powerful.
He argued he’s never had support in California his entire life.
He argued this was his chance to pursue a college education.
Everyone became emotional. Human decency prevailed with the attorney withdrawing opposition. The judge had tears in her eyes. “I’ve been a judge 10 years,” Lyons said, “and this is something I never get to do. Re’Mahn Davis, you’re no longer a ward of the court. I believe you’re going to graduate high school. And I believe one day you’re going to graduate from college.” Thinking back, Davis is fortunate he had the wherewithal — in the moment — to deliver a message straight from the heart. He was mature enough to grasp the stakes.
“At this point, I’ve got to speak for myself. That’s it,” Davis says. “Thankfully I just had the balls to speak up. If I didn’t, I wouldn't be here. I didn’t dream to be here. This wasn’t a dream.
“I just was surviving, man. Football was just fun. It was just a game that I loved.”
At his going-away party, he met the rest of his siblings. He’s got 14 in all.
The NFL was never a realistic destination in his mind. Once he got to Trinity-Pawling, he threw himself into four sports — basketball, baseball, track, football — and excelled most with a pigskin in his hands and defenders to vanquish. One more postgrad year at Blair Academy (N.J.) was needed to become NCAA eligible and he rushed for 1,698 yards and 35 touchdowns in eight games.
He starred at Temple… and craved the SEC spotlight.
He starred at Vanderbilt and even graduated… but knew he needed to do more to get drafted.
With one final year of eligibility, Davis headed to Kentucky. His finest game was a 26-carry, 280-yard, three-touchdown decimation of the Florida Gators. He didn’t celebrate. Immediately after the 33-14 win, Davis went home and rewatched both the coaches film and TV copy to take notes on everything he could’ve done differently.
“I realized that I could have run for 300 if I didn’t miss some holes,” Davis says. “I’m always trying to critique myself.”
Even then, Davis didn’t think the NFL was a possibility — at all. Mainly because he mustered only 59 yards in a blowout loss to Georgia the next week. (“I shit the bed.”) It wasn’t until his final collegiate game against Louisville that he envisioned going pro. With one minute left, he scored the game-winning, 37-yard touchdown. This dash to the end zone was his life in a nutshell. He’s patient. He hesitates a split-second before hitting the hole and high-stepping past two Louisville defenders.
Impressive, yet it was a much different play that got him drafted.
On Sept. 23, 2023 — against his former Vandy teammates — Davis had the chance to drill one of his closest friends in pass protection: safety CJ Taylor. Through their years together in Nashville, the two were never able to go all-out against each other in practice. So ahead of this showdown, Davis warned him. Davis told him he was taking his shot if he got the chance.
He saw Taylor was blitzing. He sent him airborne.
Two-hundred and seventeen days later, the Buffalo Bills selected Davis 128th overall in the fourth round. When GM Brandon Beane was asked why, he pointed to this play.
The future
Before Ray Davis tore through the Jets defense, he enjoyed a succulent tomahawk steak in New Jersey. It was so good he had a slab shipped back to his place in Hamburg, NY to gift his neighbor as a token of gratitude.
Naturally, his neighbor returned the favor. He shared that steak with Davis.
Life is much different for the kid once lost in the system.
He lives alone. No wife, no kids, no dog. But he’s immersing himself into the community as much as possible. Davis loves BBQ’ing with his neighbors in the village and invites them to games. When he’s not grilling, he’s enjoying a steak at Lucia’s on the Lake. He goes to the movies. He loves being around kids, certain it’s a byproduct of his master’s degree in diaper-changing. One of his first orders of business in WNY was linking up with the local foster organization. He desperately wants his new community to know he’s more than a football player.
This NFL paycheck sure beats Candlestick parking money.
He even has a strong relationship with his father now. (“That’s my dog.”)
All of it is a total 180-degree turn. All of it should compel Davis to truly enjoy how far he’s come. But he won’t. He can’t. He shakes his head at the suggestion.
“I don’t like to celebrate small wins. Once you start celebrating small wins and you become complacent, then you don’t understand what it really took to get here. I haven’t had that exhale moment. I haven’t had that…,” says Davis, taking an exaggerated deep breath. “… I made it feeling. Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel real that I’m in the NFL because all I can think about is being that young kid who was told, ‘You were never going to make it.’ That’s all I can think about. I haven’t had a moment where I'm like, ‘I made it.’”
Like so many others, Beane saw special traits that Davis didn’t realize he possessed. Ahead of the draft, the Bills were going to bring him in for a visit but the running back got sick. It didn’t matter. The one-hour Zoom interview was more than enough to support everything they loved on film. Bills running backs coach Kelly Skipper put Davis through a whole install of plays — runs, protections, routes — and was stunned.
Word for word, Davis repeated back everything Skipper installed.
“His football knowledge was phenomenal,” Skipper says. “I was like, ‘Man, he’s got a photographic memory. This dude is sharp.’”
Skipper had Davis take notes and, when he looked at those notes, they were extremely neat and tidy. Another small sign that this sport meant a lot to him.
“It’s about his life,” Skipper says. “He’s taking it serious. Because he knows the alternative. Where he grew up, he doesn’t want to go back to that. So he’s going to put everything he has into it. It’s all about surviving. He knows he’s got to work hard to survive. That’s all he's done in his life — survive. To have a mental mindset like that? It goes a long way. He doesn’t want to let himself down or anybody who’s helped him along the way. He’s got pride.
“Everything was stacked against him.”
There’s a different maturity to Davis because, Skipper adds, “he raised himself.”
Buffalo’s mountain of a 6-foot-8, 311-pound right tackle, Spencer Brown, was surprised by how rapidly Davis picked up the flow of the run game. Up close, in the trenches, he can see and hear just how much Davis’ homeless past translates to his profession.
“That upbringing would probably make your piss a little hot,” Brown says. “We love it.”
His first 1 ½ years with the Bills, Brown admits there wasn’t much of a rushing game in town. Now, he believes this is a unit built for lake-effect snow. The Southtowns will see two to three feet of snow this weekend — this should be a hometown advantage. Just because you have an MVP-level quarterback, it doesn’t mean the run game has to suffer. No question, Beane and head coach Sean McDermott both viewed the hardnosed Davis as a player built for such elements. Physically and mentally. Not everyone in the sport can handle this weather. Miami Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks called his team “soft” after getting embarrassed by the Green Bay Packers at frigid Lambeau Field on Thanksgiving Night.
A word you’ll never hear uttered by anyone who’s ever been around Davis.
Skipper expects all three of his backs to take turns puncturing defensive fronts down the stretch.
He describes Davis as a back who’s “compact” and “stocky,” yet explosive through the hole. The 63-yard catch and run vs. Miami hinted at his sneaky ability as a receiver, too. Davis realized the Dolphins were blitzing and got to the flat. All he needed to do was make one defender miss. Skipper sees genuine football speed, saying Davis can “score from anywhere.” He’s short. He’s admittedly a bit pudgy. He ran a 4.52 in the 40. He looks like the kid you’d pick last in a playground pickup game. But when the ball is in his hands — from Temple to Vandy to Kentucky to, now, Buffalo — intangibles burst from Ray Davis’ pores.
It's taken a while. But this Bills offense may now be capable of hammering a defense in January, if required.
When Beane stressed the importance of adding players without the scars of playoff losses past, this is exactly what he wanted: a running back who’ll meet the Kansas City Chiefs head-on.
For years, Davis concealed his story. Not because he was worried what people would think. Rather, he doesn’t enjoy receiving sympathy — or even empathy — from anyone. He didn’t want anyone from his past thinking, “Damn, what could I have done?” because he’s convinced nothing could’ve been done. He has zero regrets. He’s not even angry at those foster parents who treated him so poorly.
Over the years, droves of people have been telling Davis his story helped. They, too, were lost in the system. His raw transparency serves as a jolt of motivation.
“Five years from now, I could be still in the league and there could be a rookie who comes in and is like, ‘Bro, I read that story. I watched that interview. You gave me some type of inspiration to know I can make it.’ So that’s what I ultimately hope my story does. I don’t care from the football standpoint. I don’t really care about being a celebrity. I hope my story is able to inspire somebody to want to do something. They don’t have to be an NFL player. They don’t have to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher.
“I just hope my story inspires them to know that whatever obstacles are in front of them, they could face it and they could beat it.”
The best way to keep inspiring is to celebrate nothing. He’ll mentally process each day the same way he did in the shadow of Candlestick. The boom of 71,608 adoring fans won’t change a thing. Oh, it might look like Ray Davis is having the time of his life in the end zone, but the joy will be short-lived. He escaped homelessness but — psychologically? — he always wants to be that kid at the shelter relying on a food pantry to survive. The fear that tomorrow’s not promised still burns.
This is the mindset that kept him alive.
If he stays firmly in survival mode, Davis knows only good things will happen — for him, for the Bills… and most certainly not for those, uh, mother-(bleepers) absorbing his fury for four straight quarters.
Says Davis: “I’m used to having to fight. I’m going to continue to fight every day.”
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The Bills ~ Beane, McDermott ~ the Scouts know how to evaluate talent. They bring in players with character, talent and character. It says so much about the Bills "culture" ~ it's real and felt by the other players on the team. Ray Davis is a perfect fit for Buffalo and the Bills !!
I just got a chance to read this story after a busy holiday weekend and... damn ...what a story. So much more to the person then you get from a 10 second mention during a telecast. Thanks for the great insight and shedding light on someone who has truly fought to get to this point and can appreciate the value of hard work and self-reliance. Good on you Ray!