Seahawks living Trent-free in 49ers' heads

Like Ryan Clark, Trent Williams has to lie to himself about why the 49ers are so much worse than the Seahawks

Prior to Saturday’s divisional round playoff game, ESPN’s Ryan Clark said that Sam Darnold’s oblique injury was only a pre-loaded excuse for why the Seahawks lost if the quarterback had a bad game. After the Seahawks beat the 49ers by 35 points, Clark left his excuses with San Francisco:

It would be fair to say that there’s no reason to give Clark the clickbait attention that he and ESPN colleagues are looking for, but even the 49ers own players (some of whom said they were hoping to face Seattle) aren’t immune to throwing gas on the false narrative that the Niners have more injuries than the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

The 49ers offense was missing one (1!) starter and they’ve averaged 11 points per game against the Seahawks in their last FOUR meetings against Seattle.

This wasn’t “a bad night”. That’s what they said in Week 18. That’s what they said in Week 1. With three opportunities to play the Seahawks this season, the 49ers scored a combined 26 points and managed two touchdowns, zero by “Offensive Player of the Year” Christian McCaffrey, none since early September; Kenneth Walker scored more touchdowns than that himself in 18 minutes of game time on Saturday.

And yet the 49ers have an offensive player making almost $40 million this year who is basically saying San Francisco shouldn’t be expected to score a touchdown if the tight end is out for a game. That must be pretty demoralizing for Niners fans who know that George Kittle is out for much longer than that.

Trent is a Score Loser

Last week, Niners left tackle Trent Williams emphasized that the team worked hard all year to get replacement players up to speed and prepared to play, held each other accountable, and for that reason San Francisco was able to maintain their standard of excellence despite “not having superstars” like they did in August.

After losing 41-6, Williams essentially told reporters “nah this game didn’t count” because George Kittle was out. I guess San Francisco’s standards must have been pretty low.

Williams said that the Seahawks do NOT have a great defense like the Houston Texans do, that the Niners were basically just as good as Seattle this year because they won the Week 1 game, and that San Francisco lost because “we were going against fully-loaded rosters and we had guys we just picked up a week ago”.

Okay. Should we fact check that?

The 49ers offense had:

• 100% of their starting offensive line (all returning starters from 2024, with the exception of Spencer Burford replacing Aaron Banks at guard but Burford had 29 career starts in San Fran prior to last season)

• Brock Purdy

• Christian McCaffrey

• Jauan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall

• Kyle Shanahan

• Klay Kubiak

What is Trent Williams talking about?

Perhaps just embarrassed by another demoralizing loss to Seattle in which the offense failed to reach the end zone, Williams decided to enable the false narrative by the media that the 49ers are the most injured team in history. In actuality the only teammate that Williams didn’t see when he was looking around in the huddle was Kittle AND San Francisco had 400 snaps with backup Jake Tonges to figure it out in the regular season.

Tonges had more snaps with the Niners than Elijah Arroyo, Eric Saubert, Rashid Shaheed, and Jake Bobo had with the Seahawks this year.

Literally not a single player on the Niners offense was “added last week” or even last month or even two months ago. ALL of Trent’s offensive teammates on Saturday have been with the team all season. Yes, Brandon Aiyuk is a good player who didn’t play in 2025, but San Francisco has known that was a possibility since 2024 and the 49ers had every receiver on Saturday that they would have expected to have at the start of this season.

Replacements like Demarcus Robinson and Kendrick Bourne? Robinson was signed IN FREE AGENCY and Bourne was picked up in WEEK 1! And he played for the Niners under Shanahan for FOUR YEARS!

It’s GEORGE KITTLE. It’s one player and apparently that lone injury is enough for your star left tackle to come out of a playoff game only scoring two field goals and he’s telling the media:

If your offense falls apart because of one player being out then maybe it’s not Williams who you should be paying $38 million to have next season. And Kittle isn’t going to be ready to go until midway through the 2026 season so what’s even the point of coming back next year if you’re the Niners?

Would you like to trade for Eric Saubert?

Unfortunately for the 49ers, their free agency problems go beyond the fact that players might not want to practice next to the nuclear power plant from The Simpsons. A salary cap issue that the “not that good Seahawks” won’t have.

#1 in the race, #1 in the space?

The Seahawks (15-3, number one seed, one home win away from reaching the Super Bowl, the fourth-youngest roster in the league) could have the most salary cap in the NFL in 2026 without releasing or trading a single player.

According to OvertheCap, Seattle’s projected 2026 cap space of $71.9 million and their projected effective cap space of $61.6 million is the fourth-most in the NFL:

Most of the other teams in that range like the Titans, Raiders, and Jets are terrible and that’s largely why they have so much money to spend. They will also struggle to attract marquee talent to their rosters without overspending. The Seahawks can sell free agents on winning a Super Bowl next year and get discounts.

That’s regardless of whatever happens in the next few weeks and if the Seahawks win the Super Bowl this year. Either way, Seattle’s in a power position in free agency and on the trade market because they’re a great team already, they have a head coach earning the respect of players and agents around the league, and they will have a lot of money to spend.

• If the Seahawks restructure Sam Darnold’s contract, they’ll create an additional $19.6 million in cap space

That one move would essentially tie the Titans for the most space* in the NFL in 2026.

*This is obviously not totally realistic because other teams will also create more cap space, but I’m just saying it could technically happen which is crazy for a team this good.

If the Seahawks end up needing cap space, they could restructure Darnold because it’s a safe bet that he will be the quarterback in 2026 and 2027 (and even if the team moved on in 2027 it wouldn’t be that hard) or Leonard Williams, which would save almost $10 million.

-There’s a good chance that the Seahawks will either release Cooper Kupp or reduce his compensation if he wants to return, saving as much as $9.5 million.

-There’s a good chance that Uchenna Nwosu faces a similar fate because as nice as he is to have around, edge rushers playing 50% of the snaps and rarely getting to the quarterback don’t tend to make $20 million. Releasing Nwosu saves $11.5 million.

Seattle’s key free agents should not command enough money to come close to the 2026 cap space the Seahawks already have — especially the ones who they will actually sign — and I’m standing by what I’ve been saying that Kenneth Walker III is the only one who seems like a probable priority. His performance against the Niners, and Zach Charbonnet’s injury, only further solidifies the benefits that would come with continuity at running back.

The Niners wish they were so lucky but players like Trent Williams make it difficult:

San Francisco’s projected cap space is $30 million

That’s $40 million behind the Seahawks, a team that is much better than them and in the same division:

• Trent has a $38m cap hit, which is almost twice as much as Charles Cross and Abe Lucas combined

• Nick Bosa’s cap hit is almost $42 million, which is more than Leonard Williams and DeMarcus Lawrence combined

• Brandon Aiyuk’s cap hit is almost $15 million—if the 49ers release him, it’s $30 million now or spread out over 2 years if released post-June 1

• George Kittle’s cap hit is $16 million

• Christian McCaffrey’s cap hit is almost $11 million

I wanted to note these cap hits for specific reasons: Trent Williams is going to be 38 years old; Bosa is coming off of his second major knee injury; Kittle is dealing with the dread Achilles injury and that could ruin his entire 2026 season; McCaffrey is going to be a 30-year-old running back and he’s owed way more in 2027 when he’ll be 31; Aiyuk is going to cost the 49ers $30 million in some form or fashion without playing for the team again.

Though the Niners could be financially OK this year, they are staring at significant cap problems in 2027 when Williams will be a free agent (the Niners will likely need a new left tackle at some point anyway) and almost every good player on the roster is over 30.

What about the 49ers DEFENSIVE absences?

I almost forgot to mention anything about Bosa and Fred Warner, which I’m sure Trent Williams will leave a comment about (if he signs up for Regular Joes) after this newsletter goes out:

Yes, these are very important players!

Basically every other key defensive player who the 49ers had on Saturday were players that they had in Week 1 or shortly thereafter. The only exceptions would be Eric Kendricks, a veteran linebacker with 150 career starts who many said has been playing good, and linebacker Garret Wallow.

The Niners also added Keion White and Clelin Ferrell midseason as their best efforts to replace Bosa.

For Trent:

Nobody’s going to say that the 49ers defense would be just as good as it would have been with Warner and Bosa, but nobody would have said that the Niners defense was good in 2024 when those two were healthy.

The safeties? The cornerbacks? The defensive tackles? The defensive coordinator? These are all the people who they brought with them INTO the 2025 regular season. The regular season. They’ve been with the 49ers since March or April, at the latest.

What about first round pick edge Mykel Williams? A rookie and a rookie who wasn’t even playing at a high level when he got injured in Week 9.

The 49ers defense did not seem like it was going to be that good going into the season but that didn’t stop fans and San Francisco media from hyping up players like CB Deommodore Lenoir, S Marques Sigle, LB Dee Winters, CB Renardo Green, CB Upton Stout, DE Bryce Huff, DT Alfred Collins, and DT Jordan Elliott before the season as players who would Robert Saleh would turn into stars by now.

They were all available on Saturday. The Seahawks have rushed for 355 yards against these players in their last two games.

Or did the 49ers run away from accountability on defense too? “Didn’t have Bosa and Warner” feels like yet another pre-loaded excuse.

Seaside Joe 2512

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