When and if he does, who will have his back?

The preseason is over, and Trent Williams isn’t here. The Pro Bowl left tackle’s holdout now looms over the regular season, and while that isn’t exactly breaking news — no one really expected Williams to watch the final preseason game Thursday night, then arrive Friday morning in Ashburn, grinning — it’s unarguable that his absence lessens Washington’s chance of winning the Sept. 8 opener at Philadelphia, and the following game against Dallas, and so on and so on, ad infinitum.

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Want reason for optimism? We present to you Bruce Allen, team president.

“I think Trent is going to play football,” Allen told NBC Washington’s Sherree Burruss this week. When Burruss pressed Allen on whether that could be for another team through a trade, the man who oversees the club’s football operation replied flatly, “No, it’ll be with us.”

This is the same fella who back in June, when Williams skipped mandatory minicamp to officially signal his displeasure, told NBC Sports Washington’s JP Finlay, “I know what the truth is.”

A truth he has shared with no one publicly.

So, any optimism entering the Philadelphia game that Williams magically will appear in the locker room, pull on jersey No. 71 and immediately begin protecting the blind side of Keenum and Haskins has to be based on the cryptic words of a team leader who has not addressed the situation forthrightly. Take your glass-half-full stance at your own peril.

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The flip side comes from one of Williams’s former teammates. DeAngelo Hall dressed in a locker stall across the room from Williams for eight seasons and now works for NFL Network. On a podcast he co-hosts for the Athletic, Hall said he went right to the source for an update.

“I reached out to him, and he’s like, ‘Man, there’s zero chance I’ll be in that building next week,’ ” Hall said.

In a contest of whom we should trust — DeAngelo or Bruce — I’d take Hall on all the days that end in “y.”

There are interesting elements to this story going forward, and they don’t all have to deal with whether Keenum or Haskins is protected or not. The crux of the dispute, The Post and others have reported, stems not only from medical care Williams received from Washington’s staff — including what Williams believes was a misdiagnosis of a growth on his head — but distrust rooted in the sacrifices Williams made for a team that, during nearly the entirety of his nine-year tenure, has been in some form of chaos.

With all that in mind, I’m still struck by something one of Williams’s teammates — Morgan Moses, the veteran tackle who plays opposite Williams, on the right side — said back in minicamp, when Trent wasn’t around.

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“It’s about time someone like that stands up,” Moses said that day.

Moses didn’t utter those words by accident. In a league in which players, even great players, are so frequently treated as junk parts, a player of Williams’s stature drawing a line in the sand over how he is treated matters. As team officials and even teammates repeatedly have said they expect Trent to show up, Moses cut to the gravity of the situation.

This isn’t to be compared to the holdouts of, say, Ezekiel Elliott or Melvin Gordon. Their gripes are legitimate, too, but they’re running backs playing on rookie deals who know their clubs will gladly give them 300 touches a year with no regard to the impact on their bodies. They’re essentially protesting a salary structure that is less likely to reward running backs, who history shows tend to deteriorate rapidly with age.

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Williams’s protest is more pointed, more personal.

The other non-football issue that could impact the future here: Who in the world is going to trumpet the potential in Washington? Who could tell other players — be they rookies just entering the locker room or free agents who may be evaluating various situations — what it would mean to win here?

In a previous life, Williams could regale teammates with tales of the sacrifices he made to try to push this franchise into the playoffs. How he played despite a knee injury in 2017, knowing he needed surgery but delaying it until Washington was eliminated from the playoff race. How he endured a thumb injury the following year but suited up anyway. How there’s a rich history here, and the fan base would be euphoric if the current players could somehow repeat it. He could have been an ambassador still in uniform.

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Is it possible that version of Williams returns? Eh, maybe. Maybe by the time Haskins becomes the starter, this whole holdout will seem like a blip, a protest in principle but ultimately not in substance. Color me doubtful, but it’s possible.

Either way, the preseason is over. Trent Williams hasn’t reported. Washington can’t be the best version of itself, whatever that is, without him. That impacts the Philadelphia game, obviously, and all those in which he doesn’t suit up beyond that.