Trent Williams came to an agreement with the San Francisco 49ers on the most expensive offensive line contract in NFL history early Wednesday morning, one that is worth a total of $138.06 million over six years with a record-setting yearly average of $23.01 million with $55.1 million in guarantees and a signing bonus of $30.1 million.
More details are now known about the contract Williams signed with the 49ers, courtesy of NFL Insider Field Yates of ESPN. Here's a rundown of some of the important elements of Williams' contract, as tweeted by Yates Thursday morning.
* The base salaries in the deal are lower at first, then start to balloon in 2023. Yates says Williams will be due a base salary of $1.55 million in 2021 and $7.25 million in 2022 before his base salary rises to $19.4 million in 2023, $20.05 million in 2024, $22.5 million in 2025, and $32.1 million in 2026. Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reported Wednesday that the first two years of the deal are fully guaranteed.
* Yates referred to the final three years of the contract as option years. Yates says those years must be decided on by April 1, 2023, which would then trigger a $10 million guarantee for the 2023 season.
* Williams has a yearly workout bonus of $100,000 beginning in 2022. He also has yearly per-game bonuses of up to $750,000 per year.
* Senior NFL reporter Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated says another $6.2 million will be guaranteed for 2023 next March. Breer totals the deal as being worth $32.4 million in 2021 when adding in the signing bonus, $40.5 million over two years, $60.75 million over three years, $81.65 million over four years, and $105 million over five years. "(The) deal really is for $60.75 million over 3 years ($20.25 million per). Then ... We'll see," Breer wrote.
* OverTheCap.com has a look at what the cap number would look like in each year of the contract. There's an $8.226 million cap number in 2021 that moves up to $14.12 million in 2022, $26.27 million in 2023, $26.92 million in 2024, $29.37 million in 2025, and $33.06 million in 2026. A pre-June 1 cut in 2024 would save $14.88 million in cap space with $12.04 million in dead money and in 2025 would save $23.35 million in cap space with $6.02 million in dead money. A post-June 1 cut in 2023 would save $19 million in cap space with $7.27 in dead money. A cut in 2026 would save $33.06 million in cap space with zero dead money.
It remains to be seen if there are more details of the contract to be reported, but what's listed above obviously changes the complexion of the deal quite a bit.
Williams, 32, came to the 49ers via trade from the Washington Football Team in April of 2020 with one year left on his previous contract. He chose to stay with the 49ers Wednesday after getting a heavy push from other teams, most notably the Kansas City Chiefs.
"(The) Chiefs were incredibly close in the early hours of the morning," tweeted ESPN reporter Jeremy Fowler on Wednesday. "Nearly got it done, even at those massive numbers. Niners put it over the top."
