Washington closed the door on Trent Williamsreturning this season by putting him on the non-football injury list.
'The bridge has definitely been burned': Trent Williams says Redskins have smeared him in aftermath of cancer diagnosis
Mike Jones
USA TODAY Nov 8, 2019
Even before the Washington Redskins officially ruled out Trent Williams on Thursday for the rest of the 2019 season, the schism between the player and team had been widening.
The Redskins’ request for a third-party investigation into
the medical care of the left tackle only further damaged the already fractured relationship between the two sides. The seven-time Pro Bowl left tackle, who on Thursday was placed on the season-ending reserve/non-football injury list by the franchise, said the move and ongoing media leaks have only validated his beliefs that he can’t trust his employers.
“If I felt like they were genuine, I’d be all for it,” Williams told USA TODAY Sports. “They’re not doing it to find out what went wrong. They’re doing it to cover their butts.
"Mine isn’t the only situation they got wrong. There are a lot of situations they could have looked into. Why didn’t they do it before now? Why didn’t they do it in (quarterback) Colt (McCoy’s) case? And they keep putting out these false reports. That’s never helpful. I just feel like regardless of what the findings of the investigation are, they’re going to try to find a way to paint me negatively and make themselves look better.”
Redskins general manager Bruce Allen did not immediately respond to a request from USA TODAY Sports on Williams' allegations.
Williams spoke to USA TODAY Sports prior to Thursday's move—though he later said he was surprised by the decision—but he cited a deep dissatisfaction with the franchise as well as uncertainty about his future.
Williams stayed away from the organization for months dating back to spring because he no longer trusts team doctors and officials, he said. He maintains he asked team doctors numerous times in the last six years about a growth on his head and told them he feared that it was cancerous. Doctors repeatedly classified the growth as a cyst, Williams said.
Williams said in 2016, three years after he claimed he first raised the issue, he asked team doctors to send him to a dermatologist but was again told that the growth was a cyst. In 2017, he said, he asked doctors while scheduling knee surgery if they could remove the growth since he would be sedated, but “they said it wasn’t that serious.” The following year, he again asked about the removal of the growth during two separate procedures (one on his thumb and another on his knee), he said, but was told to wait for the offseason.
In January 2019, Williams had a biopsy of the growth. He said he received a call while at the Pro Bowl informing him that it was indeed cancer. At that point, according to Williams , Redskins owner Daniel Snyder flew him on a private jet to Chicago for an examination, to his hometown of Houston for a second opinion and then back to Chicago for surgery.
Williams said he was told the cancer cells were weeks away from penetrating his skull.
“It was a scary situation,” he said of being diagnosed with Dermatofibrosarcoma Protuberans, a soft-tissue sarcoma that develops in the deep layers of skin.
Williams told USA TODAY Sports the dismissive nature with which Allen reacted to the matter soured him on the franchise. Although Snyder, himself a cancer survivor, had been supportive, Allen’s response and the team doctors' misdiagnosis — coupled with a long track record of medical mishaps, including repeated setbacks and post-surgery infections and/or corrective surgeries of McCoy, quarterback Alex Smith and running back Derrius Guice — prompted Williams to request a trade.
The Redskins were reluctant to meet those demands. The organization did not trade him at last week's deadline, so Williams reported to team headquarters to avoid losing an accrued season toward free agency. However, he has yet to step foot on the field after not passing a physical because his helmet caused discomfort at the area from where his tumor was removed.
Williams said he believes Allen was behind the many media reports that linked his dissatisfaction with the team to his contract status while downplaying the medical concerns or pinning blame on him for missteps. When former Redskins general manager and current NFL Network analyst Charley Casserly relayed the same school of thinking last week, Williams’ frustrations were renewed.
“They started putting poison pills out there, that it was just about the money," Williams said. "The talk about me missing appointments? I’ll tell you what it was. It was scheduled for a Thursday, and I went on a Friday. I just had gotten it off by a day, one time.”
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