Packers cornerback Tramon Williams suffered a right shoulder injury in the first game of the 2011 season. A year and a half later, he’s still feeling its effects.
Williams said on 105.7 The Fan that after sitting out Week Two of 2011 with that injury, he decided to tough it out and keep playing through it for the rest of 2011. The shoulder was still bothering him when the 2012 season started, but he kept toughing it out last year, too. As a result, he says, the injury still hasn’t fully healed.
“I had some tears in my shoulder and I had nerve damage in my shoulder, and it was tough,” Williams said, via SportsRadioInterviews.com. “I only missed one game because of it, but it should have been one of those things to where I should have sat down for quite a few games. But at the same time, I haven’t been hurt at any point in my career. So you always want to be that guy who shows up and sends a message to your teammates like, ‘OK, this guy, he’s hurt but he’s out here for his teammates.’ And that’s what I wanted to show. I wanted to show that I could play through that and I did. I got through it. Everyone goes through adversity at some point in their career — that was one of my points, and I got through it.”
Williams’ shoulder injury was not listed on the Packers’ injury report last season, apparently because Williams never considered missing any time with it. But he acknowledged that he’s not as good a cornerback with a bad shoulder because he can’t jam receivers at the line of scrimmage the way he’d like.
“We press a lot in Green Bay so I wasn’t able to do it at that point, wasn’t able to do anything,” Williams said. “So it was kind of hard to sit back, because when you’re off you’re kind of giving away some throws. You don’t want to give up anything. So you have to kind of compensate your game for the injury, but like I said, I got through it and just continue to progress. Like I said, I had nerve damage, so that’s one thing that takes time. It could be a year, it could be two years to come back. And it’s made progress, but it’s still coming. So it’s one of those deals to where my shoulder’s still getting better at this point. I’m still working on it and hopefully it comes all the way back this year.”
In a sign of how much his teammates appreciated him fighting through that injury, the Packers voted Williams the winner of their Ed Block Courage Award.