Jan 12, 2022

  • Nick WagonerESPN Staff Writer

    Shut

    • Covered Rams for nine years for stlouisrams.com
    • Previously covered Academy of Missouri football
    • Member of Pro Football game Writers of America

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- It's Sept. xiii, 2020, and San Francisco 49ers left tackle Trent Williams hasn't played a meaningful snap of football in 623 days.

Getting through the opener confronting the visiting Arizona Cardinals without incident would be cause for celebration for Williams, who was diagnosed with a rare cancerous growth on his head in January 2019.

For every bit repose equally Williams tin can be, his game has ever spoken much louder, and he showed that 18 snaps into his emotional return. Williams threw a block on Arizona linebacker Jordan Hicks so jarring that social media and the internet immediately exploded in a manner normally reserved for a Kardashian or, at least, a Mahomes.

In San Francisco's locker room, Williams' phone blew up. The texts came in waves as his block made the rounds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and everything in between. A version of the cake on "The Checkdown" Twitter account garnered 1.8 meg views.

By the fourth dimension Williams looked at it, he had played 62 snaps in a loss and had virtually forgotten what happened. The 100-plus text messages offered a reminder. What he saw in his Twitter mentions ensured he wouldn't forget.

"Information technology went crazy," Williams said. "Social media and all that due south--- went to a whole dissimilar level. I was surprised to kind of see the reaction by it."

Traditionally, offensive linemen simply grab attention for the wrong reasons. But when the 49ers visit the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday in the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs (4:30 p.chiliad. ET, CBS), Williams, who the Niners are optimistic will return from a sprained elbow for his first playoff game since 2016, will be one of the stars.

Joe Staley, the left tackle who preceded Williams with the Niners, went to half dozen Pro Bowls, merely ask Staley his well-nigh buzzworthy moment and he will instantly bring up the 2014 game confronting the Denver Broncos in which DeMarcus Ware beat him with a fake spin move.

Yes, even the best tackles get beat, merely the hope is to avert having the GIF vultures and meme leeches take find.

Unless, of course, you're Williams, a vi-foot-5, 320-pound tackle who has been clocked running 19.ix mph in a game, casually bench presses 400-plus pounds and has earned a reputation as such a dominant offensive tackle that he has brought linemen out of anonymity and into the spotlight.

"The things that Trent does, they are truly special," Niners left guard Laken Tomlinson said. "Non hearing your proper noun chosen, I think, is a good matter when it comes to offensive linemen. Obviously non for Trent, considering he'due south a superstar."

'That man has a family'

On a contempo autumn afternoon, Williams sits down and walks ESPN through the cake on Hicks, step by stride.

The play is a simple gap scheme run in which the correct guard, Williams and Tomlinson are going to each take one of 3 defenders. Before the snap, Williams notes what is called a "guard bubble" in which nobody is lined up over Tomlinson. That alerts Williams to the fact that there's nobody in his "gap," which means he might have the chance to run free at Hicks, who is lined up about seven yards away.

Williams' hopes aren't up only yet, though, as he is waiting to see if pre-snap move will cause a defensive realignment. Equally Williams drops to a three-point opinion, he realizes that isn't happening.

Although Williams knows he is going to get a head of steam before the snap, he's still expecting Hicks to encounter him in fourth dimension to evade a clean shot. At the snap, Williams sees Hicks peeking at right guard Daniel Brunskill pulling from the opposite side.

As Williams strides toward Hicks, Williams nonetheless expects to exist noticed before he tin make contact. It'southward not until he is nigh 2 yards away that Williams realizes he'due south going to go the kind of free cake linemen dream almost. He runs clean through Hicks, planting him but inside the 15-1000 line.

"He looked at me similar, 'What the hell?'" said Williams of Hicks, who finished the game. "I just got on him so quick. He's not used to that."

Republic of chad Orzel, an associate professor of physics at New York'southward Union College, broke downward the block from the perspective of Hicks, who is listed at 6-human foot-1, 237 pounds.

According to Orzel's frame-past-frame breakdown of the play, Williams fires out of his opinion and gets upwards to effectually v meters in one.2 seconds and is in contact with Hicks for roughly 0.2 seconds, during which he drives Hicks backward by just more than than a yard from more than or less a standing start. That's an acceleration rate of nearly 25 meters per second squared or almost two.6 times the acceleration of gravity.

For a signal of comparison, Orzel said that level of dispatch is a fleck like what you'd feel if you were running at a wall at about 10 mph and stopped yourself with your arms or if you stopped something moving at 20 mph over a distance of about 10 feet.

"This is a nice analogy of the usual communication near big guys in football, namely that you don't desire to let them get up a head of steam," Orzel said. "It'south a lot easier to continue them from getting started than to end them once they're moving."

Or if you'd prefer your explanation in viral terms, Williams points to his favorite social media response to the cake.

"People kept proverb, 'That man has a family unit,'" Williams said, laughing.

The evolution of the viral block

Long before social media existed, the only style for a young offensive lineman to sentinel and acquire from those who came before him was to locate a VHS instructional tape, use a VCR and hope to option up some pointers.

For an aspiring offensive tackle named Walter Jones in Aliceville, Alabama, a re-create of "The Fundamentals of Offensive Line Play," starring then future Pro Football game Hall of Fame offensive tackle Anthony Munoz, was the only option.

Jones watched the record repeatedly, studying everything from footwork to stances to hand placement. He watched information technology until the record brutal apart. The tape meant then much to Jones, who would go on to the Hall of Fame himself after nine Pro Bowls playing left tackle for the Seattle Seahawks, he is still searching for a copy.

"Every time I see Anthony Munoz, I say, 'I know you've got that VHS somewhere in your garage or your basement or somewhere,'" Jones said. "That's something I would honey to have to put in my bays instance."

Such relics are a product of a foretime era in which offensive linemen were rarely seen and heard even less. Until Jones and his contemporaries came along. Drafted over a two-year period starting in 1996, Jonathan Ogden, Orlando Pace and Jones introduced the world to a new breed of offensive tackle.

Every bit a freshman at Longview (Texas) High School in 2003, Williams was just beginning to wrap his listen around playing offensive line. In pee wee football, he had started out every bit a running back but speedily grew as well heavy. In middle schoolhouse, he harbored dreams of playing tight end like his begetter, just Williams was bigger than most of the other kids, and his coach suggested tackle.

By the time he reached high school, the Longview coaching staff told Williams he could exist a rotational tight end or a starting tackle. The choice was easy once Williams understood how the likes of Pace and Ogden were irresolute the game.

But when Williams watched the top tackles, it was Jones he couldn't stop watching. Williams saw that Jones was a few inches shorter than Ogden and Pace but a dynamic athlete. At the time, Williams wore No. 70 because his brother also wore it and his mom wanted to purchase only one shirt she could wear to the varsity and JV or freshman games.

"Then when I saw Walter Jones, I just became obsessed with him," Williams said. "I only watched the Seahawks every time I could. And so I switched my number to 71, kind of like wanting to be my own cocky and go upward out of my brother's footsteps but then as well paying tribute to my idol. That's kind of how I learned it. When they told me that's where I'd be, that'due south who I wanted to learn from."

Finding Seahawks games wasn't always easy, merely whenever he could, Williams would study Jones.

I game that wasn't hard to observe: the 2005 NFC Championship Game. It was the day Jones' Seahawks advanced to their commencement Super Bowl, but it was likewise the day Jones delivered the biggest cake of his career, one that undoubtedly would have had him trending had it taken place a decade later.

Like Williams, Jones' biggest block also happened to come on the terminal play of the start quarter, a handoff to running back Shaun Alexander designed to go around the left side. After engaging the Carolina Panthers' Mike Rucker, a 6-human foot-5, 275-pound lineman who had a solid, nine-twelvemonth career, Jones got to Rucker'south outside shoulder and exploded forward, driving Rucker from Carolina'south 18-yard line to the iii-thou line earlier putting him on his dorsum as Alexander gained 15 yards.

"That's one of those blocks that you have with you lot forever," Jones said. "I played 13 years, and that'southward the only ane that actually stands out, then that just tells you how tough it is to do that in the NFL."

Of course, while Jones might only really remember that one, in that location were plenty of others. The difference is he played in an era when such blocks weren't apace clipped and posted for the earth to consume.

The first viral block Williams even remembers seeing was Dallas Cowboys guard La'el Collins wiping out multiple Seahawks in 2015.

"It only sort of happened recently where people are paying attention to the trenches and how physical information technology can go far there and how much we tin can affect the event of the game," Williams said.

Redefining the position

When the 49ers signed Williams to a record-setting deal averaging more than $23 1000000 a yr in March, motorbus Kyle Shanahan said one of the things he was well-nigh excited about was all the ways they could apply Williams in the offense.

That's not something you lot oft hear about an offensive tackle, but it's something Shanahan and offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel don't shy away from because it challenges them to think about what Williams makes possible.

"Trent is a very unique player at his position in that he's been probably the all-time athlete for about a decade at the position," McDaniel said. "What people don't realize is that Trent is very mindful well-nigh his craft. ... Unparalleled talent in conjunction with a guy that it means a lot to, that is trying to be the best of the best each and every day. That's meant a lot for our squad and allowed usa to do a lot of cool things with him this season and we'll hopefully continue to do."

While the Arizona cake remains Williams' career favorite, he has made a habit of going viral. There was the big block to free quarterback Trey Lance at the goal line for a touchdown in Week 3 this season. And the many times Williams has taken a grown human and tossed him to the ground.

The easy assumption is Williams uses his size and strength to brand that happen, only as he tells it, none of those viral blocks would even have been possible without doing the mental legwork outset. On any given play, Williams said his primary business is getting to his assignment and that he'southward never thinking in advance near leveling a defender with a crushing block.

"Sometimes, yous have got the perfect angle to take reward and be concrete," Williams said. "Sometimes, you lot have got to kind of approach information technology with white gloves so that you don't miss."

It's not until Williams is engaged and on top of his assignment that he can flip the switch and do something that might set the internet abuzz.

"For offensive line, I know the pancake blocks and s--- are existent thrilling. Only for me, I never get in looking to annihilate somebody; it but has to happen in the context of the play," Williams said.

And yet, Williams seems to find a way to provide those thrills more ofttimes than any lineman in the league. It's why teammates observe themselves marveling at what Williams does both in real fourth dimension and when they relive previous games on motion-picture show.

"Trent is one of one," 49ers tight end George Kittle said. "On the football field, off the football field, everything he does, there's no one else that can do what he does and play at the level he does. He's an incredible monster."

At 33, Williams seems to exist at the top of his game. This season, he earned his ninth Pro Bowl option, and he is on pace to get the highest-graded histrion regardless of position in the history of Pro Football game Focus. He already has set a new bar for other tackles to reach financially, and he has no designs on slowing down any time soon.

All of which is why the man Williams grew up idolizing believes he'll one day welcome Williams to Canton, Ohio, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame as i of the best to ever do it.

"I love to see the guys who have swag, and I think Trent -- it's only a different swag when yous come across it on the film," Jones said. "A lot of times with offensive linemen, nosotros don't want to be noticed at all. We want to go out and play football. But I tell people all the time that offensive lineman tin exist rock stars at present."