Ethical Sports Takes

Offensive linemen rarely become superstars.

They don’t score touchdowns. They don’t rack up sacks. Most of their greatest plays never make the highlight reel, and if they’re doing their job perfectly, sometimes you barely hear their name at all.

Trent Williams became a superstar anyway.

At 6-foot-5 and around 320 pounds, Williams possesses a combination of strength, athleticism, technique and longevity that almost doesn’t make sense for a man his size. For well over a decade, he has lined up at left tackle against some of the most dangerous defensive players football has produced and consistently found a way to make them look human.

That is why The Silverback comes in at #5 on the Ethical Sports Takes list of the greatest offensive linemen in NFL history.

The Anchor of Every Offensive Line

Williams entered the NFL as the fourth overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft after an outstanding career at Oklahoma.

From Washington to San Francisco, one thing remained consistent: put Trent Williams at left tackle and you immediately have an anchor for your entire offensive line.

Left tackle is one of the most demanding positions in football. You’re routinely asked to protect your quarterback’s blind side against some of the fastest, strongest and most technically gifted defenders in the sport.

Williams has spent his career doing exactly that.

His feet are unbelievably quick for someone weighing more than 300 pounds. His balance makes it incredibly difficult to knock him off his spot. His strength means trying to run through him usually isn’t a better option. And once Williams gets his hands properly positioned on a defender, the rep can essentially be over.

He doesn’t merely survive against pass rushers.

He shuts them down.

Making the Best Look Human

The best way to understand Williams’ greatness is to look at the era in which he played.

This wasn’t a generation lacking defensive monsters.

J.J. Watt. Aaron Donald. Myles Garrett.

Williams has existed in the same era as some of the most physically gifted and destructive defensive players the NFL has ever seen. These are players who can wreck an entire offensive game plan by themselves.

Yet Williams has repeatedly shown that he can stand across from that caliber of opponent and handle the assignment.

Against most offensive tackles, these defensive superstars look like aliens.

Against Trent Williams, they can suddenly look human.

That’s what separates a great tackle from an all-time one. Williams wasn’t building his reputation by dominating mediocre competition. He was protecting the blind side while sharing the field with some of the greatest defensive players football has ever produced.

The assignment could be terrifying for everybody else.

For Williams, it was another Sunday.

A 320-Pound Athletic Freak

Pass protection is only half of what makes Williams special.

Watching him in the running game can be even more ridiculous.

When Williams joined Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers in 2020, his extraordinary athleticism became impossible to ignore. San Francisco could get him moving across formations, pulling into space or climbing into the second level and allow a 320-pound offensive tackle to build up momentum against much smaller defenders.

That’s not a matchup many defensive players want.

There aren’t many offensive linemen in NFL history where you could watch a running play specifically because you wanted to see what the left tackle was about to do.

Williams became one of them.

He could overpower defensive linemen at the point of attack and then, on another snap, move through open space with the athleticism of someone significantly smaller.

Strength. Feet. Balance. Technique. Violence.

Williams had everything you could possibly design in a left tackle.

The Résumé

Williams’ career accomplishments reflect just how long he has remained among football’s elite.

12× Pro Bowl selection

3× AP First-Team All-Pro

2× AP Second-Team All-Pro

NFL 2010s All-Decade Team

Fourth overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft

More than 200 NFL starts

Being selected to the NFL 2010s All-Decade Team placed Williams among the defining offensive linemen of an entire era. Even more impressively, some of the greatest football of his career came after that decade had already ended.

He also produced one of the most dominant seasons ever graded for an offensive lineman in 2021, when Pro Football Focus gave Williams a 98.3 overall grade.

But even those numbers don’t completely explain his greatness.

Offensive-line statistics will never tell the story the way quarterback or receiver numbers can. There is no career touchdown total that captures how many drives Williams saved by eliminating an elite pass rusher.

Sometimes the greatest statistic for an offensive lineman is simply watching the defender across from him accomplish nothing.

Williams made a career out of that.

Even Cancer Couldn’t Stop the Dominance

Then came something far bigger than football.

In 2019, Williams was diagnosed with dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans, a rare form of cancer, after a growth on his scalp that had been present for years was eventually properly evaluated. Williams later underwent multiple surgeries and missed the entire 2019 NFL season.

At that point, football didn’t matter.

Williams was fighting something far more serious than any defensive lineman he had ever faced.

He eventually recovered and was traded to San Francisco in 2020.

And somehow, after everything he had gone through, he came back even better.

Think about how ridiculous that is.

Williams missed an entire season while dealing with cancer and surgery. He returned to the NFL in his 30s, joined a new organization and proceeded to enter arguably the most dominant stretch of his career.

His three AP First-Team All-Pro selections all came after his cancer battle, from 2021 through 2023.

Cancer interrupted his career.

It couldn’t stop his dominance.

That chapter alone makes Williams’ longevity remarkable. Plenty of great offensive linemen decline as their bodies accumulate years of punishment. Williams lost an entire season while dealing with something potentially life-threatening and still returned to establish himself as the premier tackle in football.

The Modern Standard

Trent Williams is what you would build if you could create the perfect modern left tackle.

Give him overwhelming strength, remarkably quick feet, elite technique, the athleticism to dominate in space and the mentality to physically punish defenders in the running game. Then give him the responsibility of protecting the quarterback against the most dangerous pass rushers of his generation.

Williams handled all of it.

Watt could line up across from him. Donald could attack his side. Garrett could come hunting for the quarterback. Williams never needed the opponent’s reputation explained to him. His job was to keep that player out of the backfield, and for more than a decade he did it as well as anyone in football.

He anchored offensive lines in Washington. He became the centerpiece of one of football’s most physical units in San Francisco. He battled through injuries, age and even cancer without surrendering his place among the NFL’s elite.

At #5 on the Ethical Sports Takes list of the greatest offensive linemen in NFL history, Trent Williams has earned his place alongside the legends who came before him.

For more than a decade, defensive coordinators have unleashed some of the scariest pass rushers football has ever seen.

The Silverback just kept standing in their way.