Thanks alot, Trent – Appreciate ‘Ya

Posted on by

June 6, 2019

by Steve Thomas

That sound you hear is me furiously deleting an entire column that I had ready for this week and starting over with this one.  Okay, fine, I didn’t actually delete anything, but I instantly put that other bit of sports journalism genius into dry dock upon hearing the news Tuesday afternoon that Trent Williams skipped mandatory OTAs either in a bid to get a new contract or because he all of a sudden hates being a Redskin and wants out.

Wow.

Unexpected, to say the least.

I can’t say that I anticipated either a contract holdout or a beef with the front office from the likes of Trent Williams.  The initial report out of Ashburn early in the week was that Williams was holding out for money, but then former Washington Post Redskins beat writer turned CBS Sports reporter Jason LaCanfora tweeted that the issue wasn’t contract related at all:

Neither of these possibilities are good, but LaCanfora’s report is exponentially more serious.

Before we really dive into this, let’s talk background – Trent, who will be 31 in July, was drafted in 2010 and is thus about to enter his 10th NFL season.  He’s a 7x Pro Bowler and was selected as a 2nd Team All-Pro in 2015.  By any reasonable measure, Williams has been at least a top 3 left tackle, maybe higher, for essentially his entire career.  He’s been a team captain and undisputed leader of Washington’s offensive line for many years, and is a borderline hall of fame candidate.  He is certainly one of the greatest players in franchise history and a future ring of fame member.  On the negative side, Trent has been suspended for violations of the league’s drugs of abuse policy on two separate occasions, the first in 2011 and the second in 2016.  The last time he played a full 16 game season was 2013.  Over the last 3 seasons, he’s played in only 35 of 48 games due to injuries.  Regardless of his age, when Williams is on the field and healthy, he remains one of the top tackles in the game, even if he may have lost a step due to age and the cumulative effect of his injuries.

Let’s take this in two parts, because if this is a mere contract dispute, that’s one thing, but a dispute about how the franchise treated him regarding a medical diagnosis is another type of problem entirely. Or, it could be both simutaneously.

Contractually, Williams is about to enter the 4th year of a 5 year contract worth a total of $68M, with $41.25M in total guaranteed dollars.  Trent’s cap hit is $14.73M in 2019 and $14.75M in 2020.  This contract is third in the NFL amongst left tackles behind the contracts of Jake Matthews from the Falcons and Taylor Lewan from the Titans as measured by total guaranteed money.  Trent’s contract is 4th in total value for left tackles (Mathews, Lewan, and the Cowboys’ Tyron Smith are ahead) and 5th by average annual value behind Tampa Bay’s Donovan Smith, Matthews, the Giants’ Nate Solder, and Lewan.

In a general sense, I don’t begrudge anyone from trying to get a raise, Trent included, but I have to be honest: if this is about money, it seems to be a misguided effort.  Trent’s demands have not been made public, but it seems reasonable to think that he wants an extension that will make him the highest tackle in the game.  The problem is that Trent is aging, injured, and one toke away from a long suspension.  The title of “highest paid tackle in the league” can be measured in different ways, but his total extension would likely need to push his average annual value over Lewan’s $16M per year. Lewan’s contract gave him $34M guaranteed at signing and $50M in total guarantees.  As a rough guess, getting Trent’s guarantees up to over $50M, with an average annual value of approximately $16.5M, means a signing bonus of at least $20M and fully guaranteed salaries for years 1 and 2 (i.e., 2022 and 2023), with most likely a longer contract length to lessen the annual cap hit.  Therefore, in this scenario, that most likely means that Williams will be signed through age 37, with the Redskins obligated through 2023, his age 35 season.

Should the Redskins sign up for something like that, or at least close to that [hint: no]?  What are the other options?

Washington doesn’t have to go all out with the giant contract as I described.  They could forget the record-breaking deal business and just tack on a year, give Williams a signing bonus, and fully guarantee his 2019 salary to give him a nice raise.  That’s the financial compromise point and that’s far more reasonable than tying up the salary cap until Trent is 35 years old.  I could live with that, because if you think the Redskins are better off without him simply out of spite, you’re wrong – the current replacement options are Geron Christian and Ereck Flowers.  Did you hear me?  Geron Christian and Ereck Flowers.  Think about that for a minute, and then re-evaluate whether you could get behind a raise of some sort if it meant keeping Williams happy.  No disrespect to either player, but neither one is even close to being in the vicinity of Trent’s league.

The LaCanfora report is, of course, far more serious.  The background to this story is that Williams supposedly had a growth on his head which was initially feared to possibly be cancerous.  He had the growth surgically removed this past February.  The thrust of LaCanfora’s report is that Trent’s unhappiness somehow stems from the handling of the situation by the team, more specifically the medical staff.  Details are very hard to come by since this is a personal medical situation, not a football injury, and thus protected by federal law from disclosure without his consent.  On Wednesday, Jay Gruden essentially disavowed knowledge and responsibility for this matter, stating, “[a]s far as what happened between him and the doctors, that is between him and the doctors and hopefully we get that cleared up soon.”  Gruden then hinted that the problem stemmed from the diagnosis of Trent’s growth, stating, “I think where the frustration might lie is the timing of the diagnosis.  Maybe he wishes it was diagnosed a little sooner, from my understanding.”

Redskins’ starting right tackle Morgan Moses seemed to corroborate the idea that Williams’ absence was in fact related to his tumor diagnosis:

Regardless of the specifics, if this even close to being accurate, then in my opinion team owner Dan Snyder needs to get involved.  Williams is the most respected and talented player on the team and the cornerstone left tackle, and the franchise simply cannot afford to lose him right now.  Snyder needs to sit down with Trent, listen to his issues, and give him a plan as to how they will be addressed.  In other words, make it right.  Quite honestly, there isn’t much historical precedent for anyone to think that Bruce Allen possesses the skills to fix something like this.  It needs to come from the owner.  If the problem is actually related to Williams’ tumor diagnosis, then part of the solution ought a top-down review of the team’s entire medical process by an outside consultant to determine the source of the breakdown (if anywhere). Having a player upset about a possible cancer diagnosis, coming on the heels of a massive number of recent injuries and infections causing a need for multiple surgeries in multiple key players is a serious problem that should be addressed.  The point is, if these reports are accurate, this is a Dan Snyder problem and it’s on his shoulders to correct it.

Perhaps the Redskins should do both – let Mr. Snyder fix the medical diagnosis problem and also give Williams a raise.  What isn’t an answer is to trade him.  Unless the return for such a trade includes a starting-quality left tackle, which is highly unlikely, any trade will leave a massive roster hole, and it’s too late in the offseason to fix it.  I don’t particularly care what kind of draft picks are offered – one way or the other, Trent Williams needs to be on this team in 2019.  A 2020 draft pick doesn’t do anything to keep Dwayne Haskins upright in 2019.

If Trent’s unhappiness can’t be cured despite the team’s best efforts, that might just be too damn bad for him, because at the end of the day, he’s under contract with the Washington Redskins for two more years, he has millions of dollars coming, and he may have to live with that and play whether he wants to or not.