Why 49ers' Trent Williams Wasn't Ejected for Throwing a Punch in the Giants Game

NFL Senior Vice President of Officiating Walt Anderson explains why 49ers OL Trent Williams wasn't thrown out of the Giants game.

49ers star offensive tackle Trent Williams has a case to make to be a boxer.

Late in the second quarter Thursday night against the Giants, Williams and Giants defensive lineman A'Shawn Robinson got into a quarrel. It was one that resulted in Williams throwing a punch and connecting with Robinson's helmet. 

Once that occurred, I was sure Williams was going to be ejected. Throwing punches typically does that. However, Williams stayed in the game and only received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that would end up being offset due to one by Robinson. That is a lucky break for Williams that he was not ejected and also didn't sustain any injury to his hand. Last time I checked, punching a dense helmet will hurt the one throwing it than the one wearing the helmet. 

Either way, I would suspect Williams still receives some form of punishment, which likely will be a fine. Since it was surprising that Williams was not ejected, NFL Senior Vice President of Officiating Walt Anderson explained postgame the decision. Below is the full transcript of the interview conducted by Matt Barrows of The Athletic.

Question: Why wasn’t San Francisco offensive lineman Trent Williams ejected for the punch that he threw just before halftime?

Anderson: “When we have a flag thrown on the field for unnecessary roughness, members of the officiating department are able to review available video, Rule 19, to determine if there is a flagrant action that should result in a disqualification. We ended up looking at the video we had available to us, and we just didn’t see anything that rose to the level of flagrant, which is the standard that we have to apply to disqualify the player.”

Question: Striking someone in the facemask wouldn’t rise to the level of flagrant?

Anderson: “Well, these are judgment calls and a lot of times you might end up having an open hand, often a stiff arm to the face, versus a closed fist punch, which certainly carries a different weight to it. So, we ended up looking at the available video we had and just didn’t feel like the actions rose to the level of flagrant. You can certainly end up having contact with hands to the helmet, and some of those actions would be deemed a punch, others would not.

Question: It does seem like it’s a closed fist though, that didn’t factor in in the decision making there?

Anderson: “In the video that we ended up reviewing, and in a lot of these primetime games, there is often a whole lot of camera angles, from the ones that we looked at, we just felt that it didn’t rise to the level of flagrant.”

Question: Right, so what you’re saying is the angles that you saw you couldn’t make the determination that it rose to the level of flagrant?

Anderson: “We couldn’t confirm that 100 percent from the standpoint of was it truly a closed fist with a strike, we just couldn’t determine that.”