When the Dallas Cowboys moved a former left tackle over to try out at center you knew things were bad.
Connor Williams came to the NFL from the University of Texas as a tackle, made the adjustment to guard for the past three years and now the Cowboys want to see what he can do at center.
If the Cowboys' second fake game of the season on Friday night in Arizona is any indication, this is not going well.
Williams had multiple shaky exchanges with quarterback Garrett Gilbert in the first half of the Cowboys' loss to the Cardinals, and it's not clear whom the Cowboys prefer — Williams, or Tyler Biadasz.
The Cowboys can't say it, but their preference remains Travis Frederick, whose retirement from the game in March of 2020 created a lingering problem for the team that has them forcing a tackle to play center.
"It was both perfect, and the worst timing available," Frederick said in an interview earlier this summer of his retirement that he announced in March of 2020. "It's so stressful to watch [the games] and knowing my best friends are on the field. I was on pins and needles sometimes watching them.
"I don't know if those feelings will ever go away, but it will get easier as my friends stop playing when there is nobody on the team I know."
That won't happen for a few more years, and Frederick is still not coming back.
He's happy running his "Blocking Hunger" foundation, and while there are parts of the game he misses, he's done.
"It was a bittersweet moment. I can't imagine what it was like to play during the season and not just because the way the season went but because of the [COVID] protocols and the hoops and the logistics of that," he said.
"For me, personally, I'm glad not to have been a part of that. On the flip side, it was difficult to watch when guys were struggling and getting hurt. It was a unique experience to watch it and there was nothing I can do to help. I felt so bad for them. There was this hollowness to knowing there was nothing I could have done."
The Cowboys had Joe Looney at center last season for 12 games, but he signed with the New York Giants only to retire a few days later. Rookie Biadasz started four games, but his development has led the team to try Williams at center.
Frederick was an All-Pro player and replacing him was never going to be as easy as drafting a player in the fourth round. It was also not thought to be this hard.
The Cowboys were not expecting Frederick to retire when he was 29. In a perfect world, he would have played through at least one more contract before they needed a new starting center.
But he was dealing with Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disease that affects the nervous system. He never quite felt the same after he was diagnosed in 2018, which wiped out his entire year.
While the Cowboys struggled without him last season, his foundation successfully funded meals for thousands of at-risk kids throughout region who were unable to eat at school because they were closed during the height of the pandemic.
Along with being a husband and a dad, those are his missions now.
"It's important to me and it has been since the inception to find children who aren't receiving food and make sure they are getting it," said Frederick, who recently recruited fellow University of Wisconsin alum Biadasz to join the foundation's board.
"What we did is to go into places where programs didn't exist and provide them meals."
What Frederick is doing now is far more meaningful and significant than playing a football game.
Despite how true that might be, the Cowboys are still in the midst of their search for a replacement.
