Ian Williams can relate to what former teammate Alex Smith went through

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Ian Williams didn’t play quarterback; he wasn’t a No. 1 overall draft choice; and he never made a Pro Bowl.

But Williams understands exactly what Alex Smith has gone through, and he is rooting for his former 49ers teammate to make it all the way back.

“I hope he can come back, and I hope he can prove everybody wrong, including his doctors,” Williams, now an analyst with NBCSportsBayArea, said in a phone interview. “But at the same time, I hope he doesn’t hurt himself while he’s trying to prove everybody wrong. Sometimes you just need to prove something to yourself, and I think at the end of the day, this is what he’s doing. He’s trying to prove something to himself. Whether he plays a game again, at least he pushed himself to be the best he could be. The best you’re going to be for the rest of your life.”

Williams was a nose tackle for the 49ers from 2011-15, two of those seasons with Smith at quarterback.

Smith was cleared to practice over the weekend for the first time since having numerous surgeries to repair a compound leg fracture during the 2018 season. An infection in Smith’s leg turned septic, and it necessitated an extended process aimed at saving his life and then saving his leg.

Williams’ career ended with an MRSA infection in his left ankle, which he fractured in back-to-back seasons. He underwent five or six surgeries over a period of a couple of months in 2016 to save his ankle.

“It’s the things you can’t see, that you can’t fight yourself that you overlook,” Williams said. “I overlooked staph and MRSA. ‘Let’s put some alcohol on it, put a Band-Aid on it, and I’ll be good.’ Guys think like that all the time. Once this infection gets into your body, it’s deadly. The next thing you know you’re in the hospital, fighting for your life.

“When you hit rock bottom like that, when you wake up and see your leg like that, I know the feeling. You wake up from surgery, and you look down at your leg, and it doesn’t look like it did before. I don’t wish that on anybody. I had a fixator on my ankle just like Alex Smith had on his leg. It’s a difficult sight. I hope people pay attention to his story.”

Williams now works for Applied Silver, a health tech company focused on eliminating the spread of infection through laundry-based technology that actively kills dangerous pathogens and viruses post laundry with a product called SilvaClean.