SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The stare down and holdout is over. Trent Williams and the San Francisco 49ers have agreed to a restructured three-year contract that’s vaulted the star left tackle back up the positional pay ranking and guaranteed him $48 million at signing.
“I didn’t think that it would get this drawn out, but it’s a tough business and this was a really intricate contract restructure,” Williams said at the team facility Tuesday. “So it took time to get to where both sides feel like it was a win-win.”
The final structure isn’t yet fully available, but the preliminary ones indicate the 49ers managed to clear over $10 million in 2024 salary-cap space. They’ve continued their strategy of aggressively opening near-term room so that unused money can roll over into future years, when expenditures are expected to increase significantly with a new contract for quarterback Brock Purdy.
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The 49ers — thanks to Williams’ deal, a recently completed extension for receiver Brandon Aiyuk and Tuesday’s contract restructures for receiver Deebo Samuel Sr. and defensive tackle Maliek Collins — suddenly have over $60 million of 2024 cap space at their disposal.
While most of that room will roll forward into the 2025 league year, it might also come in handy this season if the 49ers choose to absorb a larger contract as part of an in-season trade.
Williams’ deal is worth up to $82.7 million over three seasons, according to his agency, Elite Loyalty Sports. It replaces the final three years of the six-year contract Williams had signed with the 49ers in 2021. The new pact averages out to $27.6 million per year, which brings Williams back in line with the NFL’s highest-paid tackles (Tampa Bay’s Tristan Wirfs and Detroit’s Penei Sewell pace the market at about $28 million APY).
Breaking down the numbers 💸
It’s been an honor to advice on economics and guide you through the journey.
TO GOD BE THE GLORY #eliteloyaltysports @OU_Football pic.twitter.com/VYc4Hs1kq7
— Elite Loyalty Sports (@eliteloyaltysp) September 3, 2024
The 49ers and Williams had to thread a needle to reach agreement, mainly because Williams — even though he is still playing at an elite level — is 36 years old. But Williams was willing to stay away from the facility and incur over $2 million in mandatory, unforgivable fines — $50,000 per day — to exert his leverage and re-secure a spot near the top of the market.
“For lack of a better word, it’s a kind of a war,” Williams said. “Both sides are going to lose a little blood, but you wave a white flag at the end, we sign a little peace treaty and we good.”
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Williams might actually face significantly more than $2 million in fines for the holdout. A source briefed on the matter said the number could end up closer to $4 million because there’s some uncertainty regarding whether or not Williams technically re-signed with the 49ers in the manner of a standard contract extension, or if he was already a free agent back in 2021. The uncertainty comes down to timing, and if Williams was classified as the latter — the NFL and NFLPA will make that determination — he might also be subject to hefty fines for missing the 49ers’ preseason games.
But regardless of how that’s adjudicated, Williams will come out on top financially. He stood to make a maximum of $20.8 million this season on his old contract. The Year 1 cash flow of this new deal, $27.7 million, easily exceeds that plus the maximum possible fine total. The 49ers got there by awarding Williams a $25.7 million signing bonus, which will be prorated five years against the cap — thereby helping the team navigate its crowded books.
“How I’ve always conducted myself after signing a deal, I ask, ‘How can I prove that I’m worth that, worth even more?’” Williams said. “I want to play til I’m 40. I want us to be winning Super Bowls at 41, 42. Why not me?”
Williams said he never considered retirement and that he actually got started on his offseason training regimen sooner than in the past. The deal sets Williams up for $358.8 million in career earnings, the most ever for a non-quarterback, and he’s motivated to live up to it so he can continue making similar history.
“I was under contract until I’m 38, and it’s hard to ask someone to guarantee an eight-figure salary when I’m 38 — I understand that, I get both sides of it,” Williams said. “But in my heart of hearts, I’ll be the same player (at 38).
“I just want to continue to knock barriers down. There haven’t been a lot of people to play at an All-Pro level (at this age) outside of quarterback. I want to continue to show that this is a new age. … For me, it’s just more logs in the fire that I can prove I can be something they’ve never seen before.”
Williams said that he wants to play as long as he’s productive.
“Father Time is undefeated, but obviously you can fight him off for a little bit,” Williams said. “I’m just going to want to play football. That’s all I’ve done since the second grade.”
That, then, made it hard for Williams to be away from the 49ers’ facility until Tuesday, when he arrived just hours before practice from Texas on his private jet.
“(The holdout) let me know that I’m still hungry,” Williams said. “I still miss the game. It was depressing watching everyone go through camp, joint practices, the preseason. You think of a kid not being able to go out for recess and having to watch everyone through the window.”
Visual evidence that Trent Williams is at practice … pic.twitter.com/v2lTOxUWAZ
— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) September 3, 2024
Williams said he missed the camaraderie of the locker room and chances to talk frequently to 49ers offensive line coach Chris Foerster, whom he considers as close as a family member. He rattled off impressive performances from 49ers rookies that he’d watched from afar. And in doing that, Williams brought up his first interaction with receiver Ricky Pearsall, who was shot during a downtown San Francisco robbery attempt on Saturday but — remarkably — has already made his return to the team facility.
Williams met Pearsall in June when the veteran was in town for one day during the team’s spring minicamp. Williams said that Pearsall went out of his way to introduce himself.
“I instantly felt this vibe,” Williams said. “(Pearsall) is such a genuine person.”
The interaction left a mark that the veteran remembered when he learned of the incident this past weekend — and he said it might’ve hastened the end of his holdout, which came just in time for the 49ers’ first game-week practice of this 2024 season.
“I felt more compelled to come back after that than anything,” Williams said. “I just wanted to be a voice in his hear to let him know everything will be all right. I wanted to be around for that.”
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(Photo: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
