49ers coach hints at worrying potential plan for Trent Williams in season opener following holdout
Throughout the offseason, members of the San Francisco 49ers expressed extreme confidence Trent Williams would be ready for the season regardless of when he showed up to the facility. Williams' contract holdout finally ended on Tuesday, the All-Pro left tackle agreeing to a reworked deal with the 49ers that satisfied his demand for guaranteed money. […]
Throughout the offseason, members of the San Francisco 49ers expressed extreme confidence Trent Williams would be ready for the season regardless of when he showed up to the facility.
Williams' contract holdout finally ended on Tuesday, the All-Pro left tackle agreeing to a reworked deal with the 49ers that satisfied his demand for guaranteed money.
That left him just under a week to get in football shape for the Niners' season opener with the New York Jets on Monday.
Speaking on Friday, offensive line coach and run game coordinator Chris Foerster said Williams has looked exactly as the 49ers expected in practice to this point. However, he indicated San Francisco is open to implementing a rotation policy at left tackle if the 49ers do not feel Williams is 100 percent. That would involve bringing in Jaylon Moore, who took the first-team reps during training camp and preseason in Williams' absence.
"Trent is Trent. He continues to be Trent," Foerster told reporters. "He gets out there and I guess always, we've talked about it before, getting guys ready to play, there's that push and pull of being full speed against somebody shoving on you. Yesterday that got him a little bit but today he seemed much better and tomorrow he'll continue to push himself and we'll see how it goes."
Referencing a victory over the Los Angeles Rams in 2020 as a previous example that has led the 49ers to discuss at least having Moore spell Williams, Foerster added: "I think a couple years ago in the Covid year, we went down to Sofi, and Trent was coming off an injury, and the fourth quarter of that game, I went back and looked at it the other day with Dustin Perry, our strength coach, we had like a nine-play drive, 11-play drive, and a 12 or 13-play drive to win the game when Robbie [Gould] kicked the field goal at the end, Nick Mullens was quarterback and we won at the end on the field goal.
"And Trent said that fourth quarter he was hanging on, and he'd just come off an injury. So you know, you'd like to think he's [Kyle Shanahan] going to play him, but it could be an 80-play game, and it could end up in a position where the guy can't do it.
"So is it going to be a rotation? I don't know. We'll see how Trent does after tomorrow and see exactly what happens. I hope Trent can play it out. If he can't. Jaylon definitely has had a good camp and is ready to go. And how we orchestrate that? I'm not sure that we have to. We'll see.
"You see Trent Williams over there on the bike pedaling while he's waiting for the next series? I don't know, it just kind of seems weird. I don't know how we're going to do it.
"We'll see how it goes, it's a work in progress, but we've had a lot we've discussion about it. We'll see what happens."
Moore filled in admirably for Williams last season when the future Hall of Famer missed two games with an ankle injury, but the 49ers lost both of those games.
But 2021 fifth-round pick endured some worrying struggles in preseason, allowing a team-high six pressures, per Pro Football Focus.
The strength of the Jets' vaunted defensive line is on the interior, but they do possess some high-upside talents on the edge in the likes of Jermaine Johnson II and Will McDonald IV. Unless the 49ers have the game in hand, bringing Moore into the game against D-Line with the kind of weaponry the Jets have in that area would seem foolish.
Still, the Niners are ruling nothing out, but the hope will be that Williams has knocked off sufficient rust by the end of Saturday's practice to be able to handle a full workload.
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