Seven-time Pro Bowler Trent Williams’ career with the Washington Redskins seems to be coming to an ugly end, and Williams believes the organization is smearing his name over a dispute about their medical practices.
The Redskins placed Williams – who revealed last month that he was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and that the team “underestimated” a growth on his year for years – on the non-football injury list this week, and the team is not paying the remainder of Williams’ $5.1 million in base salary for the rest of the season. Williams had held out until the trade deadline, and after the Redskins failed to move him, Williams spoke out about his medical issues. The Redskins responded by requesting a third-party review of their handling of Williams’ care.
According to Williams, he went to team doctors in 2013 to address a growth on his head, and was repeatedly told that it was a harmless cyst and that he didn’t need to worry about it. The cyst continued to grow, but Williams was assured that it was a non-issue. Only when Williams went to have it removed in 2019 did a non-team doctor discover that the cyst was actually a cancerous tumor.
This mishandling of an injury isn’t a one-off for the Redskins staff, according to Williams. In a interview with Craig Hoffman of 106.7 The Fan, Williams recalled playing through a knee injury that left him considerably hobbled, and a time when the Redskins’ doctors severely underestimated ligament damage to his hand.
Via 106.7 The Fan:
“I remember one instance where my agent was livid. We played in New York last year when I tore my thumb up. My thumb wasn’t even fitting in the socket. Like my ligament was completely gone. It was wrapped around the thumb muscle, so I had NOTHING holding my thumb in place.
“And they just taped it and sent me back out there! I was just like…well part of me didn’t want to quit because it was just a finger, ya know? But the other part of me was like, ‘Damn. This feels unsafe!” I had never dislocated a finger in my life, so I don’t know how it’s supposed to feel, but I can’t even drink water without my thumb popping out of place.
“Then you go there the next morning and they start telling me the treatment and stuff and I’ll be ready the next week. My agent steps in the middle and gets a second opinion, and they told me I needed to be on the operating table as of yesterday.
“And its like damn, how do they get that far off when they lookin’ at the same pictures that those other doctors are looking at?”
Williams said that he would have remained quiet about his issues with the Redskins had they traded him, but felt compelled to speak out when it was clear he was stuck in Washington with a medical staff he couldn’t trust.
“No matter how rich I am or how much money I have, when the doctors told me in February that I didn’t have long to live, that [expletive] didn’t matter. It wasn’t about money no more. I couldn’t buy a new brain. I couldn’t buy a new skull. You know what I’m saying?
“The money was obsolete at that point. It still is. It was a point to prove. It’s something more than that. It’s morals. It’s integrity. I had to. I couldn’t just sit there and let this go because it would have. If I had never spoken to you guys, you guys would have never known what happened.”
