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Will 49ers LT Trent Williams Retire After 2024?

Call me crazy, but Trent Williams doesn't seem particularly motivated to play football anymore.

Grant Cohn

Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams (71) arrives before playing against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams (71) arrives before playing against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports / Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
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Call me crazy, but Trent Williams doesn't seem particularly motivated to play football anymore.

He's 36. He's a future first-ballot Hall of Famer. And he has earned more than $170 million in his career. He doesn't need to play football anymore. He's set for nine lives.

He already doesn't practice during the season. Or he rarely practices -- maybe once a week. And every season, he misses at least two games. So he's practically a part-time player. An elite part-timer, but a part-timer nonetheless.

That's why his current hold out should come as no surprise. He doesn't seem like he wants to participate in training camp, anyway. Having a financial reason to skip it is convenient.

But he also seems like he could retire if the 49ers don't meet his demands. Which makes you wonder if retirement is on his mind.

Williams is scheduled to earn roughly $20 million this season. I'm guessing he wants the 49ers to give him a $10 million raise so he can be the highest-paid offensive lineman in the NFL this year. I'm guessing he wants to get every last penny he can this year before he calls it quits next year. Call it a golden parachute. He wants one last massive pay day before he rides out into the sunset.

The 49ers have to be careful not to guarantee the remaining years on Williams' deal. Because if they do and he retires, their dead cap hits will be so massive, they'll be in salary cap hell for years.

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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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