much fight after that. It was unbelievable. I felt like it was a dream that I just couldn’t wake up from. I didn’t want to believe it.”
“I went through the shock of getting the diagnosis,” Williams said in an interview. “The pressure that comes behind knowing you have a rare form of cancer that could potentially cost you your life.”
Part of that pressure came from Williams’ fear that he wouldn’t be around for his daughters’ biggest moments. His daughters, Micah and Makayla were 9 and 5 at the time. He ultimately decided to withhold the news from his daughters to spare their feelings.
“While I wanted them to understand what I was going through, I also feel like my first role as a father is protector, and you never want your kids to worry about you,” Williams shares. “I wasn’t as concerned with my time here for myself. I was more so concerned about having young daughters without a father figure.”
His journey back to football
Williams underwent the first of three scalp reconstruction procedures in February 2019. Doctors were able to successfully remove the cancerous tumor just weeks before it metastasized through his skull, which allowed him to avoid chemotherapy (a treatment that would have put a 15-year cap on his life). The surgeries incorporated about 30 percent of his scalp, skin grafts from his thigh and a few hundred stitches, according to the NFL. Fortunately, the incisions in his head would not force him to have to retire from football.
After being sidelined for eight months, having trouble wearing a helmet and being placed on the non-football injury list against his wishes, Williams’ was granted a trade to his favored destination, San Francisco, by his former team Washington.
“I think that part of my life I learned the most about myself,” Williams shares. “When tragedy strikes, everybody always thinks about the impact and whether you survive or not. Hardly ever do you think about how it feels to start from square one. I feel like that’s exactly where I was starting from, after going through those surgeries and taking the time off to recover and just mentally what I had went through just even having to think about dying at such an early age. When all the smoke clears, here I am, I haven’t lifted weights, I haven’t run, I haven’t even broken a sweat in eight or nine months. There was no easy way to go about it. There only was the hard route, that was to bust my butt and get into elite football shape and being the elite player that I once was, and having to hear all the doubts. I wasn’t very open with what I went through, so I know a lot of people doubted. They thought it was more so contracts, and I understood that, but the human nature of being criticized, it has an effect sometimes.”
Ultimately Williams’ hard work paid off and the 49ers granted him a six-year contract, but it didn’t come without