Trent Williams Opens Up on How He Found Out About His Brain Tumor: “I Was Sitting in a Meeting, Just Bored I’m Playing Them Like My Hair, and I Just Feel Like a Little Bump”

Trent Williams is arguably the best offensive tackle in the league. The San Francisco 49ers star has been named a Pro Bowler nine times in his 12-year career in the NFL. He has won consecutive Pro Bowls since 2012, except in 2019 when he had to undergo a procedure for brain cancer. 

The 33-year-old has shown incredible strength and resilience on and off the field. One of the biggest challenges in his life was to beat cancer. However, by the time he got to know about his tumor, doctors believed it might have been too late. Williams discovered a bump on his head in 2014 but did not receive treatment for it until 2019. 

Trent Williams found a bump on his head that was later reported to be a tumor

“I was sitting in a meeting, just bored I’m playing them like my hair, and I just feel like a little bump,” Williams said in the I AM ATHLETE Podcast.

“I got a headache associated with it, but I probably wouldn’t just, stress and just playing with, messing with it all day. So I didn’t really panic. The headache came the next day. So I went on Google, and that’s when I look. I’m like, I just typed in a lump on a scalp or on the skull, and then a bunch of stuff about cancer came up. So immediately I called a trainer. I booked the appointment with a doctor the next day.”

However, it was the lack of oversight by the team doctors that the diagnosis got completely overlooked. The Washington Commanders doctor termed it a cyst and did not take any required action, which Williams later called a “human error” since DFSP is a rare form of cancer. 

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Over the next five years from 2014 to 2019, Williams kept on asking the Commanders’ medical staff to operate the then known cyst, but they kept denying it. The star tackle went knee and thumb surgeries but was not able to convince the staff to operate the head bump. 

The urgency to get treatment in 2019

By the time he headed towards the 2019 season, Williams urged the medical staff to book an appointment with a specialist. However, the news was not good when he went for a checkup. “My team doc called 30 minutes later,” Williams continued. “He like, ‘Hey, turns out that wasn’t a cyst you know, they said it’s a tumor.'”

By this point, Williams was worried that his football career was over. But after his MRI scan, it was something else that the doctor was worried about. The doctor straight-up revealed that he needed to “get his affairs in order.”

It was truly a moment of darkness for the star tackle. Fortunately, it was later revealed that the tumor did not fully metastasize through his skull. Which meant that his cancer did not reach the terminal stage. 

Williams went through surgery to operate his tumor out and was back to business by the 2020 regular season, this time playing for the San Francisco 49ers. He has since claimed two consecutive Pro Bowls, and most is certainly destroying the opponents in the gridiron.

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