Seattle Seahawks defensive end Leonard Williams will make history when he takes the field for Sunday's regular-season finale against the Arizona Cardinals.
Williams came to Seattle via a mid-season trade with the New York Giants on Oct. 30. The Seahawks already had their bye week by that time, but the Giants had not.
As a result, Williams has the opportunity to become the first NFL player in nearly 100 years to play 18 games in a single season.
To find the last time any player accomplished that, you'd have to go all the way back to 1930. During that time, the now-defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets often played more games than other teams in the league, sometimes playing multiple games on the same weekend. As a result, two players - Cookie Tackwell and Tony Kostos - played in 18 games that season, thanks in part to playing with both Frankford and the Minneapolis Red Jackets.
While the Yellow Jackets folded in 1931, a piece of the franchise lives on in the Philadelphia Eagles, founded in 1933. When the NFL awarded an expansion franchise to Eagles founders Bert Bell and Lud Wray, the league also gave them the assets of the Yellow Jackets.
The Eagles do not recognize the Yellow Jackets' history as their own, although they wore similar powder blue and yellow uniforms in their infancy and even brought those colors back for one game in 2007.
Playing 18 games in a season only became possible when the NFL moved to a 17-game schedule in 2021, so Williams gets to be the first to achieve a unique bit of history.
While not getting a bye week is less than ideal, Williams will at least get an extra game check to compensate.
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