The Trent Williams Era Comes to a Close
November 13, 2019
by Steve Thomas
The history between the Washington Redskins and their star left tackle, Trent Williams, got much more complicated two weeks ago, as Williams returned to the team from an extended holdout, back in body if not in spirit. He then failed his team physical the next day when he claimed that he could not put on his helmet without pain.
Williams talked with reporters in the locker room at length after his return, dropping a number of bombshells along the way that most likely spell doom for his long-term relationship with the team. Among other highlights, Williams confirmed that he had a rare form of cancer in a tumor on his head that he had first noticed back in 2013 but which was not removed until earlier this year.
I’m not going to summarize Williams’ comments here; the best account of the presser and the issues raised are in Craig Hoffman’s piece from October 31 (Click here to read it). Subsequent to Williams’ comments, the Redskins requested an independent medical review of Williams’ treatment via a right granted by the collective bargaining agreement. The NFLPA then announced last week that Williams would not cooperate in such an investigation, ostensibly because he wanted to put the incident behind him.
Williams later did interviews with Mike Jones of the USA Today, John Keim of ESPN, and Hoffman to further clarify his thoughts.
The Redskins had to put Williams on the Non-Football Injury list last week as a result of the helmet issue, which ends his season and gives the Redskins the right to refuse to pay him his salary for the remainder of the season, a right that they have exercised. As of now, Williams can still get credit for an accrued season, but it’s within the realm of possible for the Redskins to petition the NFL to not award Williams the season.
Fundamentally, the issue raised by Williams is that the Redskins medical staff initially misdiagnosed his tumor back in 2013 and continued to not diagnose it properly or recommend that he see a specialist. Disturbingly, Williams also claimed that no one from the Redskins front office visited him when he was in admitted to a hospital in Chicago for two weeks, and said that there had been no communication with the team during his holdout.
Williams’ medical situation is certainly horrible, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It’s easy to listen to the story and place all of the fault squarely on the feet of Bruce Allen, who Williams was clearly blaming in his comments to the assembled media without using his name. Lord knows, Bruce deserves all the criticism that we can heap on him. However, I think everyone needs to understand that this matter is a two-way street. Some of his story had inconsistencies and just didn’t add up – fot example, Williams initially said that no one from the Redskins front office visited him in the hospital, which is inexcusable, but he failed to mentioned that Redskins head trainer Larry Hess spent time with him in Chicago, only confirming Hess’ visit later. Williams also initially stated that he’d had no communications with anyone from the front office, but later acknowledged that he did speak with Allen in a conversation in which Allen offered to let Williams tell him who to fire amongst the medical staff. I say this not to bash Williams, but to point out that what we have heard so far was merely one side of a multi-faceted story.
I suspect that the Redskins are fairly sure that the team’s medical staff did advise him long ago to get his tumor evaluated by a specialist. If that recommendation wasn’t already documented in his medical records held by the team, they would never be the party to initiate an independent evaluation of his care. Trent probably knows this too; otherwise, I have to think that he would have welcomed an investigation. Again, I’m not necessarily trying to doubt Trent or cast him in a negative light, but it’s pretty obvious that there’s more to this story than was provided to the public. Trent’s comments to the media were akin to a petition filed to initiate a lawsuit: it’s a just an accusation, with the evidence to come out later. Trent refusing to cooperate with the independent investigation raises significant doubts as to the veracity of his story, in my opinion. Williams is playing to the public for maximum sympathy, which is easy to get considering his medical condition and the overall sliminess of the Redskins front office.
Williams also admitted that money was an issue to him outside of the medical issues. As mentioned in the Hoffman column, Trent stated that he would’ve still been unhappy with his contract – specifically the lack of additional guaranteed money – irrespective of his medical situation. So this situation is not just about the tumor. Of course, at the time the team Trent signed his latest contract, he was the highest paid offensive lineman in history. He’s signed two contracts worth over $60M each, and even today, four years later, he’s still in the top 10 for lineman, contract-wise. Feel free to root for whoever you want in this predicament, but Williams has made a huge amount of money and nobody should feel sorry for him for his finances. He’s been paid appropriately considering his stature within the league.
Williams has known all along that he’d have to speak to the media and has had months to prepare. Trent has a legitimate beef with the team, no doubt, but everyone should understand that his comments were expressly intended to put Trent in as positive a light as possible.
The truth is that both sides share blame for the current predicament. Trent abandoned his teammates for months at least partially for monetary reasons. The full extent of the Redskins’ culpability for his cancer is not known, but it seems to me to probably be less than you might think. Dan Snyder probably could have fixed this situation months ago if he were a better leader, but he obviously didn’t make nearly enough of an effort to do so, if any. That’s why I advocated as far back as training camp to not trade him while there was still a chance to make things right.
Now that this mess has become public, though, it appears to be unfixable, unfortunately. Trent is one of the greatest lineman ever to play for the Redskins, and I’ll be sad to see him go, but at this point, he needs to be traded in the offseason for whatever they can get, regardless of the truth of what actually happened. It’s possible that we’ll never really know. Unfortunately, Washington may ultimately pay a price on the free agent market for the poor way they’ve handled this entire situation. In the meantime, I’m ready to welcome the Redskins’ new starting left tackle next season.