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Trent Williams Says the 49ers Had a Hard Time Without McCaffrey

"It has been hard, but it's hard every year and I think that's the case for a lot of offenses around the league."

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams (71) before the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams (71) before the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
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SANTA CLARA -- The 49ers opened Christian McCaffrey's three-week practice window on Monday. Here's what Trent Williams said about McCaffrey's impending return.

Q: Is it nice to have Christian McCaffrey back on the field?

WILLIAMS: "It's such an amazing feeling seeing that 2-3 out there doing his extensive warmup, the million high knees he does before practice. It was great seeing him."

Q: What could he do for this offense?

WILLIAMS: "Offensive Player of the Year. Really you could put him in any offense and he's going to make them better. Obviously our offense is kind of tailor-made for him and his strengths. It's definitely going to be a tremendous lift for us."

Q: How hard has it been adjusting to not having him on the field?

WILLIAMS: "It has been hard, but it's hard every year and I think that's the case for a lot of offenses around the league. It's not one of the things you harp on, how much you wish you had one person. We would have never heard about Isaac Guerendo or seen the excellence of Jordan Mason if Christian had been healthy, so there are silver linings to some of that stuff. Even without Elijah Mitchell, we still have a super deep backfield."

Q: Do you feel a jolt of energy with Christian back out there?

WILLIAMS: "I was energized. It was a short practice, we only had one team period. Definitely super happy for him that he has turned a corner and he's able to go out and do what he loves again."

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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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