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Trent Williams Will Start Against the Jaguars

The 49ers are treating this week like a playoff game. If you can walk, you can play.

Grant Cohn

In this story:

Good news for the 49ers.

Future Hall of Fame left tackle Trent Williams will start today against the Jaguars after missing the past two games with an ankle injury, according to Adam Schefter. Williams reportedly still is not 100 percent healthy, and The NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reported that it will be a challenge for Williams to play in this game. But he'll play anyway, which shows how desperately the 49ers need to win this game.

You wouldn't think a team that's 5-3 would be this desperate, but the 49ers have lost three games in a row. They can't afford to lose a fourth game in a row. If they do, they might miss the playoffs, and they almost certainly won't get a first round bye if they make it.

So the 49ers are treating this week like a playoff game. If you can walk, you can play. All hands on deck. Worry about the pain and the bumps and the bruises next week.

If the 49ers had won either of the past two games, would Williams play today? I'm guessing not. It will be interesting to see how effective he is with this injury. It's possible the 49ers would be better off playing Jaylon Moore simply because he's healthy.

Williams is an all-time great offensive tackle, but what makes him great is his quickness and agility. He's not overly big or strong. So when he injures his ankle and loses some quickness and agility, he's not nearly as special.

The 49ers clearly feel they can't win this game without him.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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