You Gonna See Sunday

I joined the Mykel Williams fan club the way most bad decisions get made: a podcaster I trust told me to.

Dieter Kurtenbach, one half of the Dieter and Hutch podcast, rated Mykel Williams as his number one overall player in the 2025 draft. Not number one edge rusher. Number one player. I am an avid Sicko, their word for the truly afflicted, so I went and watched the film. I am not a film guy. I dabble, and half the time I don’t know what I’m looking at. But I knew what I was looking at here: a MASSIVE human being who moved like someone half his size.

Then Dieter mentioned the kid played the whole season at Georgia on a sprained ankle. Then he and Hutch said the thing that sold me completely: college defensive coordinators were building game plans around getting Mykel Williams out of the play. Not blocking him. Removing him. And he still produced. I bought in all the way.

My comp was Chris Jones. Not the draft slot, Jones was a second rounder, but the outcome: the best defensive lineman in football, the guy who personally ruined the 49ers’ last two Super Bowl trips. I pulled up Jones’ first stretch of starts and put them next to Mykel’s first NFL snaps, and I saw a guy routinely walking tackles and guards backward into the quarterback’s lap on pure strength. I also saw a guy who looked a half step slower than the player I’d talked myself into. The visions I’d had of an all-around edge terror in the Charles Haley mold, those faded. The numbers didn’t look like Jones. One sack before the knee went. Nineteen pressures, which is not nothing, but an 11th overall pick is supposed to look like more than not nothing.

So the dream died. What I didn’t expect was what replaced it.

Thursday night against the Rams, the 49ers somehow won, and I finally saw it clearly: Mykel Williams was disrupting the run game at a level that doesn’t show up unless you’re looking for it. Then came the Giants game. I was at Lulus in Waikiki with my best friend, a Vikings fan, which tells you how my football Sundays go. On that wretched MetLife turf that eats knees for fun, Williams went down. And I knew, sitting there with an IPA in my hand, that the run defense was about to fall apart.

It did. With Williams on the field last year, the 49ers allowed 3.99 yards per carry and a 45.2 percent rush success rate. Without him: 4.58 and 51.3 percent. That is not a dip. That is a different defense. 49ers On SI put it plainly: his absence is what’s hurting the run defense. Brock Purdy and Christian McCaffrey dragged that team to the playoffs and past Philly anyway, but the defense turned into the ultimate bend-but-don’t-break outfit, and everybody ran on them.

And the whole time, the bust crowdThe bust beatLarry KruegerMichelle Magdziuk was doing victory laps. The same voices who’d decided Williams wasn’t worthy of the 11th pick got their “I told you so” moment and wore it smug. They were grading a run defender on sacks. They still are.

Fred Warner sees it. “Heavy handed, setting the edges and getting off a block,” Warner said, talking about exactly the stuff that never makes a highlight reel.

Now comes Sunday. Seattle. Maybe eleven months after the last time he played football, Williams might be back. He’s leaner, and when someone asked if that makes him quicker, he said, “You gonna see Sunday.” Jennifer Lee Chan’s reporting on his body transformation this offseason has been the most encouraging 49ers content in weeks.

Here’s my honest expectation, fan club president speaking. I expect power. I expect a guy who moves the line of scrimmage and holds up when Seattle runs duo blocks at a defensive tackle group held together with tape. I expect him to look a little faster and not one bit weaker. I expect him to flash the way a first round pick should flash.

What I don’t expect is a whole new pass rush bag, because let’s be real: he spent the offseason rehabbing an ACL, not playing football. Nobody learns new moves in a training room. Give him a full offseason of actual football, more time building that body, more time building the toolbox, and then we’ll talk about the edge rusher.

For now, the wall is coming back. You gonna see Sunday. 🤞🤞🤞