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Is 49ers Left Tackle Trent Williams Beginning to Decline?

Trent Williams is coming off one of the worst seasons of his career.
Grant Cohn|
Jun 10, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams speaks to the media following an OTA at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
Jun 10, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams speaks to the media following an OTA at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images | D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

Trent Williams is coming off one of the worst seasons of his career.

It's not that he was bad last season -- actually, he was quite good for the 10 games he was on the field. But he wasn't the best left tackle in the NFL anymore, as he had been for years. And now, he'll turn 37 in August.

Still, Pro Football Focus says Williams is playing at a high level.

"Lane Johnson, Williams is a lock for the Hall of Fame," writes PFF's Ryan Smith. "Williams’ 85.6 PFF overall grade in 2024 signaled a down year by his standards but still ranked seventh out of 81 qualifying tackles in the NFL. He was the highest-graded tackle in the league from 2020 to 2023, grading no lower than 91.7 in any of those seasons.

"Williams appeared in just 10 games last season while battling injury, playing his fewest snaps (649) since 2017. He will be 37 years old by the time the 2025 campaign kicks off, but if healthy, he remains one of the game’s best at left tackle."

Unfortunately for Williams, he has missed multiple games due to ankle injuries every season he has been on the 49ers. So it's hard to expect him to bounce back and be a first-team All-Pro at this point in his career. Instead, it seems more likely that he will continue his slow decline as he gets older until ankle injuries eventually end his career.

No one plays forever.

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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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