Mykel Williams gets his first sack since his ACL tear and calls the 49ers’ Monday night win “the floor”

Mykel Williams had waited almost a year for this. Early in the third quarter of the San Francisco 49ers’ 23-17 win over the Washington Commanders on Monday night, with San Francisco up 20-3, Washington faced third-and-8 at the 49ers’ 49. Williams beat his blocker and dropped Jayden Daniels at the Washington 39 for a 12-yard loss, and the Commanders had to punt.

It was the second sack of Williams’ career and his first since he tore his ACL midway through his rookie season in 2025. Monday was only his second game back. The 49ers activated the 2025 first-round pick from the physically unable to perform list before their Week 5 game at Seattle.

“Man, I’ll go to God first and foremost, man. It just felt good to get out there and get one,” Williams told team reporter Brooke Evans after the game. “It was the third down. I went with a bull, slipped, and I won on it. I was able to get a sack.”

“This is the floor”

Williams finished with three tackles, the sack, a tackle for loss and a quarterback hit. He also made a stop that mattered in the second quarter. On third-and-6 at the San Francisco 17, he tackled Daniels on a scramble at the 13, two yards short of a first down. Daniels’ fourth-down pass fell incomplete, and the 49ers kept their 13-3 lead.

Asked about his mindset now that he is back, Williams kept it short. “Build off this. Build off this,” he said. “This is the floor, and we just got to keep stacking to get to the ceiling.”

A line that “keeps flashing”

The 49ers played without Nick Bosa again and still sacked Daniels four times. Williams, Osa Odighizuwa and Gracen Halton each had one, and Keion White and Romello Height split the other. Williams said the depth was what had impressed him most. “Just how consistent they’ve been through the first six games,” he said. “These guys have flashed from Week 1 to Week 6 and they keep flashing. So I mean, I think we got some pieces.”

He said the group is close off the field, too. “We really a close-knit group. We go to dinners almost every Thursday,” Williams said. “We always do somebody’s house, chilling, eating, cooking, vibing, playing the game.”

He also had praise for safety Malik Mustapha, who had four tackles and broke up a deep pass to Treylon Burks with two minutes left and the 49ers up six. “Malik a dog,” Williams said. “You repeatedly do something, that’s who you are. So Malik’s been repeatedly snapping, so he a dog.”

At 6-0, the 49ers play at the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, October 25, at 1 p.m. ET.