Former Patriots running back Tony Collins didn’t choose to turn his life around until he fell in love, after picking up a colleague’s phone.

“For three months, I had no idea what this lady looked like,” Collins said of his now-wife. “She would send me emails … and everything positive. And I fell in love with this lady, whom I had never seen before, because she changed my way of thinking.”

Collins visited the school earlier in the year, and spoke again Tuesday night to returning student athletes at the High School's "Meet the Coaches" event. He brought with him one message: Everyone has a choice.

“Life is all about choices,” Collins said. “The better choices you make, the more opportunities you're going to receive.”

After vowing to his mother at age 9 he would play in the NFL one day, Collins said he strove to meet that goal his entire life.

“Your words have power. Every single day, I was thinking about playing in the NFL,” Collins said. “You all have that same power.”

Collins let academics fall by the wayside at the start of his college career, accumulating a 0.7 GPA at the beginning of college. After being told he wouldn't be able to play football unless he got his grades up, Collins managed to keep his GPA around 3.0.

In his senior year of college, Collins decided to drop out to go to Miami for the NFL combine, where he would have the chance to get drafted by the NFL. He said this was one of his bad decisions.

“Do not go to college to play a sport,” Collins said. “If you get lucky enough, and you are good enough to get a free ride to a school and education like I did, take advantage of that.”

Though he was drafted by the Patriots after the combine, and was eventually a first string running back, Collins said he continued to make bad decisions. A few years down the line found the athlete with cracked ribs, which led to an addiction to painkillers.

“I made the choice to take painkillers,” Collins said. “No one forced me.”

In 1990, after being suspended from the league for a year, following testing positive for marijuana for a third time, Collins dropped out, at which point he hit an all-time low.

“I was really just existing through life for 18 years,” Collins said. “I was just really living through my son. … I was just making sure he [did] everything right. Didn’t really care about me.”

But Collins said all that changed when he picked up his colleague’s phone at a job he almost walked out on. In picking up the phone, he met his future wife, and changed his life for the better, devoting himself to helping young athletes.

“This is why I do what I do,” Collins said. “I don’t want you athletes to make the choices that I made.”

Following the event, the students went to meet briefly with their coaches for the year.

Wareham High School Athletic Director Ed Rodrigues said he thought the talk was a good one.

“He is an excellent speaker, and has a great message to send out,” Rodrigues said.