49ers Give Trent Williams Six-Year, $138 Million Extension

Of the $138 million, $30.1 million is a signing bonus, and $55.1 million is guaranteed.

Grant Cohn | Mar 17, 2021

While you were sleeping, the 49ers made Trent Williams the highest-paid offensive lineman in the NFL.

Williams signed a six-year, $138 million extension with the 49ers, according to the NFL Network's Tom Pelissero. Of the $138 million, $30.1 million is a signing bonus, and $55.1 million is guaranteed. There is no guaranteed money after Year 2 of the deal, but there certainly will be dead salary cap space if they attempt to trade or cut him for any reason.

It's remarkable the 49ers were able to afford Williams without cutting or trading their highest-paid player, Jimmy Garoppolo. Restructuring Dee Ford's contract certainly helped them create the necessary cap space, so good for the 49ers, although they’re now paying $50 million per year on Williams and Garoppolo alone.

All the terms of Williams' deal have not yet been released.

Williams is 32, so this deal could keep him on the 49ers until he's 38, if his career lasts that long.

He finished last season on Injured Reserve with an elbow injury. He sat out all of 2019 over a dispute with the Washington Football Team. He missed three games with a thumb injury in 2018. He missed six games in 2017 and finished that season on IR with a knee injury. And in 2016, the NFL suspended Williams four games for violating its policy and program for substances of abuse.

The last time Williams played a full 16-game season was 2013, when he was 25.

So he's not as durable as he was when he was young. But he's still a fantastic left tackle, both as a run blocker and as a pass protector. Although he gave up six sacks last year -- a lot of him. He seemed rusty early in the season after sitting out all of 2019.

Williams also doesn't provide leadership -- he's a lone wolf. So the 49ers signed center Alex Mack to fill their leadership void and need for a quality starting center. And now their offensive line has improved.

Stay tuned for more news on Mack, Williams and the rest of the 49ers' free-agent moves.

Published Mar 17, 2021

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.