San Francisco lineman Trent Williams makes the 49ers go, yet he never touches the football

But the man who makes it all go never touches the ball.

Trent Williams, a 320-pound and somehow twinkle-toed offensive lineman, has scored zero touchdowns this season — or, for that matter, in his entire career. According to the stars who have piled up points for the Niners, though, few of their passes, catches, or cuts would have been possible without Williams’s singular talent for flattening the people in their way.

“It’s tough to win without a left tackle you can trust,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said last month. “It helps you win when you probably have the best left tackle ever.”

Since his early days in the NFL, the 35-year-old Williams has set the standard at left tackle, the position responsible for protecting the quarterback’s blind side. He made his first Pro Bowl in 2012 as a third-year player with Washington — and then won the honour 10 more times. The only time he wasn’t invited was when he missed the 2019 season after having a cancerous growth removed from his head.

Still, it wasn’t until 2020, when San Francisco traded for Williams, that he joined a team capable of making full use of his talents. Williams stands 6-foot-5, with the reach of a redwood, but what distinguishes him is an uncommon agility, which lets him venture to distant coordinates and wallop whoever he finds there. Shanahan’s system runs on misdirection and pre-snap motion; he wants to hit a defence from every angle except the one it expects.

Over Williams’s four seasons in the Bay Area, his availability has been the single biggest bellwether for San Francisco’s fortunes. The 49ers have won 43 of the 65 games he’s played, and lost six of the nine he’s missed. His presence means the Niners’ running backs rush for nearly 40 more yards, on average, according to Stats Perform. He’s worth four and a half points to his team’s totals.

“He’s a Hall-of-Famer, a tough S.O.B., someone who can do anything he wants on the field,” said Geoff Schwartz, a former lineman with five NFL franchises. “The confidence that comes from playing with that kind of player just makes you better.”

Indeed, Williams’s influence might be most visible not in his own numbers but in those of his MVP-candidate teammates. Christian McCaffrey was one of the NFL’s top runners before joining the 49ers, having averaged 4.6 yards per carry over five and a half seasons with the Carolina Panthers. Since he touched down in San Francisco and started running in Williams’s wake, that number has risen to 5.2. (He also scored a league-high 21 touchdowns this season.) Quarterback Brock Purdy has logged an 87.9 passer rating in games he plays without Williams in front of him, with more interceptions than touchdowns. When Williams suits up, that number jumps to 112.0.

In October, Williams sprained an ankle and missed two contests. Not coincidentally, those games became part of a three-game San Francisco losing streak. After Williams returned, McCaffrey called him “the best player I’ve ever seen.”

“There’s nothing he can’t do,” McCaffrey added. “He plays beyond the X’s and O’s … It’s fun running to his side.”

For all his heft and athleticism, Williams is the thinking fan’s masher. In the 2021 playoffs, the 49ers called a play he had campaigned for Shanahan to run. On a third down, Williams lined up in the backfield away from his usual position, took a running start before the snap, and “pancaked” one defender before shoving a second one backwards. The running back stepped through the wreckage to move the chains.

“He understands angles, he understands where the ball needs to go and what the defence will try to do to stop that,” Schwartz said. “That’s every bit as important as physically making the blocks.”

When the 49ers trailed the Green Bay Packers late in their divisional-round playoff game last Saturday evening, Williams took on yet another duty — one usually reserved for quarterbacks and coaches. In the huddle, he delivered an impromptu speech, reminding his teammates that only a win would let this roster stay together for another week.

“So whatever you’ve got, just bring it,” Williams told his audience. “Bring it the next play, then bring it the next play after that.”

Purdy completed six passes as the Niners drove down the field and punched in the game-winning touchdown. On those pass plays, at the crucial moment of his season, the quarterback felt a familiar comfort. No defender so much as touched him.

– The Wall Street Journal