SANTA CLARA – Trent Williams emerged from his rookie NFL season with a tip that altered his career and life.
Move to Houston.
That 2011 advice came from Adrian Peterson, a big-brother figure and former Oklahoma teammate.
Peterson feared Williams could be adversely affected by the NFL’s offseason lockout.
“He saved my career because, I mean, you don’t know what you’ve got to train for,” Williams said Wednesday in an exclusive interview with this news organization.
Williams, 37, is midway through his 16th year in the NFL. He’s heading for his fourth and perhaps final playoff push since coming to the 49ers in 2020. Sunday will mark only his second-ever game in Houston, his offseason home.
Back in 2011, Williams had 5 ½ months to train before reporting back to Washington for his second NFL season. Rather than take part in eight player-run workouts during the lockout, he set up shop in Houston, knowing his body needed to heal from the rookie-season rigors but that he couldn’t take a step back.
“Adrian talked me into coming to train with him after my rookie year,” Williams recalled. “He knew, first off, we had a lockout coming up in 2011. And he attributed the sophomore slump for a lot of people as to not knowing how to train correctly.”
A year later, Peterson parlayed their 2012 training sessions into one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history, rebounding from a knee injury to rush for 2,097 yards and win NFL MVP honors as the Minnesota Vikings running back.
Williams has been a perennial Pro Bowler since 2012, aside from the 2019 season he missed while battling cancer. A week after looking aghast in Tampa Bay at the 49ers’ injury-riddled plight, Williams had a different view of things this past Sunday night, all while basking in the glow of victory and a 5-2 record.
“I’m super proud of the team, because we could have given up, could’ve tucked our tails, and just looked forward to next year,” Williams said after Sunday night’s 20-10 home win over the Atlanta Falcons.
“But these guys keep fighting,” Williams added. “There’s a lot of resilience in this group.”
Williams has a fight on his All-Pro hands this Sunday when he encounters the Houston Texans (2-4) and defensive ends Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson.
Monday night, Anderson lined up at right defensive end and bull-rushed his way in to a strip-sack fumble recovery for a touchdown in the Texans’ 27-19 loss in Seattle. Anderson was the 2023 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year and he has compiled 22 sacks with 48 quarterback hits in 35 games.
It’s Hunter, however, who figures to line up more against Williams, adding another chapter to their extensive history.
Williams and Hunter used to be offseason workout partners, and that involved one-on-one work until a matchup Hunter won during his dominant Minnesota Vikings tenure (2015-23).
“He literally used everything that I taught him against me,” Williams recalled. “I mean, it’s fun though. Danielle’s a really good friend of mine. We know each other really well. And so the matchups are always fun.”
Hunter has four sacks, as many as Anderson this season. Williams anticipates facing both on Sunday. The reunion with Hunter offers familiar obstacles.
“They’re always really difficult for me, but it’s also a fun matchup,” Williams said. “I know he plays like it’s chess. It’s not like he’s just using his speed and long arms and ability. No, he’s going to fundamentally find a way to break down and find your weak spot. And he’s going to have a move ready for it.”
With center Jake Brendel missing his first start in 3 ½ seasons, and with all due respect to Matt Hennessy’s fill-in potential, Williams must anchor and lead the 49ers’ wobbly offensive line more than ever. That, however, is always Williams’ assumed role. As right tackle Colton McKivitz said in Week 1: “We might be ‘Trent Williams and four other dudes’ but, you know, we’re doing alright.”
That offensive line is coming off its best game of the season, having paved the way for NFC Player of the Week Christian McCaffrey’s 201 scrimmage yards and two rushing touchdowns.
“Trent had a great game. He’s been playing really well,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “He’s got just as big if not a bigger challenge this week. Whether it’s Hunter or (Anderson), just whoever it is, even their backups, they rotate them, they all go hard. They play with a certain style and one of the best, if not tied for the best, D-lines we’ve seen.”
Williams cautioned at proclaiming himself back in peak shape, that the NFL can humble you not just weekly but play by play. “You’ve got to ask me after the year,” Williams said.
Seven starts into this season, Williams is hesitant to say he has regained his 2021-23 All-Pro form. The 49ers missed Williams the final seven games last season because of an ankle injury, and they lurched to a 1-6 finish of that 6-11 campaign.
The injury bug has hit his teammates hard this season.
“We’ve taken a lot of gut punches and a lot of blows that it would’ve been easy to fold, and I think that a lot of people would’ve understood,” Williams said. “You lose not only two of your best players, but two of the best players to ever play the game, in Nick (Bosa) and Fred (Warner), and then not having Brock (Purdy) and just getting George (Kittle) back after not having him for five weeks, it’s been tough.”
Williams has played only once before in Houston, losing the 2014 season opener there with Washington. Two years later, Williams and Peterson opened a Houston-based gym, O Athletik.
That is where Williams keeps in shape in the offseason — aside from his Cabo San Lucas retreats — for the in-season grind he’s in now. He worked out there last summer during a training-camp holdout before scoring a three-year, $82.7 million deal that runs through 2026.
Guard Spencer Burford has trained with Williams at his Houston gym and described it as “high intensity. You get a good workout.” He also said Williams and his family are recogined throughout not just Houston but “in Texas, for sure, and pretty much anywhere.”
Williams is a native of Longview, two hours east of Dallas and 3 1/2 north of Houston. He was in Houston and dining at James Harden’s Thirteen when he closed a 2021 deal with the 49ers, after nearly leaving for the Kansas City Chiefs in free agency. It made him the NFL’s highest-paid offensive lineman, and last year’s deal put him back atop the left-tackle market.
Some of that money recently went toward his new home, still in Houston, and only a few minutes from the 49ers’ team hotel this weekend.