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There was some question, heading into Sunday’s 49ers game in Washington against the Commanders, about whether 49ers left tackle Trent Williams would be able to play. He suffered a groin injury that pulled him out of the Week 16 loss to the Ravens on Christmas, and was limited in practice on Wednesday and Thursday this week. He practiced on Friday, though, and was a go in the 49ers’ 27-10 drubbing of the Commanders.
That runs the 49ers’ record this season to 12-0 in games when Williams is fully healthy, and 0-4 when he either did not play or got hurt during the game. For all the weapons that the 49ers offense boasts, Williams might be the most unsung.
Unless, that is, you ask coach Kyle Shanahan, who was Williams’ offensive coordinator in Washington for the first three years of his career before Williams came to San Francisco, with Shanahan as the coach, in 2020. Shanahan, then, knows him well. And on Sunday he offered an eye-opening take on just how good Trent Williams is.
“It’s tough to win without a left tackle you can trust, and it helps you to win when you have probably the best left tackle ever,” Shanahan said in his postgame presser. “He’s a guy that we don’t have to worry about, he is a guy that makes plays for us, too.”
Trent Williams ‘One of the Best Leaders’
That is, indeed a bold statement, putting Williams on par with the likes of Forrest Gregg, Anthony Munoz, Jim Parker, Jonathan Ogden and—well, it is a long list. And even if Trent Williams does not yet have his name listed alongside the greats, he is certainly in hot pursuit of them. He has made the Pro Bowl for 10 straight seasons, after all, and was the No. 1 rated offensive tackle by Pro Football Focus for the past three years.
He is No. 2 this year. Even at 35 years old, Williams is on top of his game.
“Being with Trent his rookie year all the way to now, he almost looks the same,” Shanahan said. “He’s not gonna bend his knees as much on walkthrough which I give him a hard time for but once that ball snaps, he looks like he is 23. He is as good of an athlete as I’ve been around, he is one of the best leaders on our team. Football’s very important to Trent. He really enjoys playing it, he really enjoys studying it. I just feel very fortunate to have him on our team, and I just can’t say enough about Trent.”
He is biased, of course. We have seen how Shanahan’s 49ers look when the offense tries to play through a Trent Williams injury. He was injured in Week 6 against Cleveland, when he hurt his ankle but played through the pain. The 49ers lost that game, and scored just 17 points. He sat out Weeks 7 and 8, too, against the Vikings and Bengals, and the 49ers lost both games, again scoring 17 points in each.
He injured his groin and left the game against Baltimore—a 49ers loss.
The Real 49ers MVP?
Pro Football Hall of Famer Ronde Barber looked at what happened to the 49ers in that loss to the Ravens, and saw a team that looked a lot like the one that was on that losing streak. Speaking on the 33rd Team website, Barber said there’s some evidence that maybe Williams ought to be the one getting MVP love.
As Barber said in a video on the site:
“We ask ourselves, how does that happen to a team that has been so proficient on offense all year long? I’ll give you one guy. We talk about Brock Purdy being the MVP, we talk about Christian McCaffrey getting MVP recognition. How about Trent Williams getting some MVP love, from this side—we all know, in those three games they lost during the year, they only scored 17 points in all three of those games.
“The one constant was the Trent Williams injury, he was out of the football game. When he went out of this football game, Brock Purdy turned into the version of Brock Purdy we saw during that three-game losing streak.”
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