Green Bay Packers cornerback Tramon Williams had a pretty terrible 2011 season. Although he wasn’t the weakest link in the Packers atrocious secondary, he was nowhere near his 2010 performance.
Apparently, he never recovered from the shoulder injury he suffered in week one. In fact, he suffered nerve damage and says he still isn’t 100 percent.
“I’ll be able to get to that point,” Williams said. “I don’t know if I’ll get to that point before we start playing. But I believe I can get back to 100%. Once the nerve gets back, I have no doubt that I’ll be back to 100%. . . . It’s one of those things you have to go through. You don’t want to sit on the sideline. If you can play, you play.”
So is Williams blaming his poor play on the injury that caused him to miss only one game? Of course he is.
“I couldn’t even lift a bench press of 30-, 35-pound dumbbells,” Williams said. “It was bad. I kind of tuned it out at some point because I knew I had to play regardless. I knew I could still play but, obviously, it affected me.”
We’re not going to speculate about what might have happened if Williams would have sat out longer. God knows Sam Shields didn’t belong in the starting lineup, so it probably wouldn’t have made much difference.
The real question is whether Williams will be able to return to form this season. We’ll have to wait and see.