What Happens if Trent Refuses to Play this Season?

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October 30, 2019

by Steve Thomas

Trent Williams returned to the Redskins yesterday, just in the nick of time to beat the CBA-mandated clock and allow his aborted 2019 season to count towards both his contract with the Redskins and his retirement. He’s apparently due to take his physical today. However, NBC Sports Washington’s JP Finley reported that Williams doesn’t intend to actually play for his team this season:

If this is true, and assuming that Williams passes his physical, then Williams apparently thinks that he can just show up, do nothing, and collect his pay and benefits from the evil Redskins front office duo, Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen.

Allow me to dissuade you of this notion.  Williams will not be able to get away with this.  He also may not be able to have this season count at all like he wants.  Allow me to explain.

Williams’ contract is not publicly available; however, there is a standard, collectively bargained form of player contract attached to the CBA.  All player contracts are based on this contract form, and many use the unmodified form as the actual signed contract.  A player of Williams’ stature most likely has a few addendums and modifications to this form in his executed contract, but the basic terms are almost assuredly the same as the form.

Paragraph 2 of the form of player contract states the following:

[The player] agrees to give his best efforts and loyalty to the Club, and to conduct himself on and off the field with appropriate recognition of the fact that the success of professional football depends largely on public respect for and approval of those associates with the game.  Player will report promptly for and participate fully in Club’s official mandatory minicamp(s), official preseason training camp, all Club meetings and practice sessions, and all preseason, regular season, and postseason football games scheduled for or by Club.

Two provisions are applicable here: Williams must (1) “give his best efforts and loyalty to the Club”, and (2) “participate fully in all . . . regular season . . . football games scheduled for or by Club”.  What these two provisions mean is that if Williams refuses to participate and play in games – meaning, if he in effect comes to work but intends to metaphorically pout in the corner for the next seven weeks – then he is in breach of contract.

As most people are aware, both the CBA and the form player contract give teams the right to unilaterally terminate player contracts for performance reasons, so the Redskins could cut Williams at any time and only suffer the salary cap consequences for doing so.  The form player contract itself doesn’t go into details about other team remedies in the event of a breach of contract by the player, but the CBA does.  Article 4, Section 9(a) of the CBA provides that if a player “willfully fails to report, practice or play with the result that the player’s ability to fully participate and contribute to the team is substantially undermined”, then the player has committed what’s defined as a “Forfeitable Breach”.

Without getting into the gory details, the bottom line is that if a player commits a “Forfeitable Breach”, then the player can be required to forfeit his salary.  This has already happened to Trent once – this is the provision the Redskins used to forfeit Williams’ regular season salary up to this point because of his holdout.  A failure by Williams to practice and play as required would be a new violation that would at a minimum be grounds for the Redskins to again refuse to pay him his salary for the weeks he refused to practice and play.

Incidentally, an injury suffered outside of a game or practice is also subject to these same “Forfeitable Breach” provision, so if Williams mysteriously comes down with an injury tomorrow that didn’t happen in practice, he’d be in the same boat. In other words, if Williams fails his physical today, the Redskins would likely put him on the non-football injury list and refuse to pay him.

Article 4, Section 9(k) allows a team and a player to modify the form of player contract to agree that a player will forfeit the maximum allowable amount of salary in the event of a “Forfeitable Breach”; however, we don’t know if Williams’ contract included this optional provision.  Regardless, the bottom line is that if Williams just reports, but then refuses to practice and play as required, the Redskins will almost certainly seek forfeiture of Williams’ salary, and would have clear contractual grounds to do so by virtue of Williams’ undeniable breach of Paragraph 2 of the form player contract.

Article 43 of the CBA describes a non-injury grievance process that both the Redskins and Williams could use in the event this situation gets ugly.  The details are another subject for another column, but if Williams does in fact refuse to practice and play, the Redskins would presumably want to look into filing a grievance to get the NFL to disallow the 2019 season to count towards Williams’ contract and towards his retirement on the premise that Williams didn’t truly participate in the season.  Let’s hope that this situation doesn’t get that ugly.  Please, for the love of all that’s good and holy, Redskins and Trent Williams, don’t go down that road, because it would only be bad for the team.  It was one thing to have a player hold out but who wasn’t at the facility to cause problems; it would be another thing entirely to have a player at Redskins Park who is intentionally being disruptive.

I’m just wildly speculating here, but it seems to me that Williams might be shooting for the same result that Keyshawn Johnson got in 2003, when Tampa Bay head coach Jon Gruden thought Johnson was so disruptive he told Johnson to leave; in the immortal words of Motley Crue, “Don’t Go Away Mad, Just Go Away”. If that happens here, the Redskins would be on the hook to pay Williams and he would get credit for the year.  It’s possible that this might be Williams’ endgame strategy. But let’s cross that bridge if and when we get to it.