Should the 49ers be Angry at Trent Williams?

Trent Williams might bail on the 49ers.
He turned down a contract extension with the 49ers before their Week 17 game against the Seattle Seahawks. Then he told reporters he wants to test free agency. This after the 49ers traded a third-round pick to Washington to get him, gave him money upfront this summer and then agreed not to give him the franchise tag. Really bent over backward to make him happy.
It seems the 49ers hoped Williams would return the favor. And he didn't.
Did Williams do something wrong?
Absolutely not.
Williams is not a fan. He is a business man. And his business is Trent Williams. His business is to get the best deal he can in the limited amount of time -- which is very limited now -- that he has left. That's how business works.
Williams would be a schmuck to say, "I'm going to take less money to go back to the 49ers who have a losing record." What he's telling the 49ers is, "You're competing for me with other teams. Show me the money."
And you know what? That's what professional sports are all about. Williams doesn't think of himself as a 49er. He thinks of himself as an NFL player who's currently stationed in Santa Clara.
He's a freelancer. I can relate. So, not only do I not put him down, I applaud him for what he's doing. Williams used the 49ers, but they used him, too. He just used them better.
Good for Williams.

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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