What’s the 49ers’ focus over final two games? Just trying to field a team
The 49ers started Jimmy Garoppolo at quarterback in 2017 after acquiring him during a Halloween trade as the team was trying to finish that season on a high note to develop winning habits. The same was true a year later as San Francisco finished 2018 at 4-12 after Garoppolo’s season-ending knee injury that September.
Parallels could be drawn to 2020. This season has also been thrown by injuries, with Garoppolo on the sidelines and San Francisco has already been eliminated from playoff contention heading into the final two games of the regular season.
Only this year, instead of focusing on developing young players and evaluating looming free agents (the 49ers have 40), coach Kyle Shanahan just wants to put a healthy team on the field.
“We’re not in a situation where we can just sit and give some guys opportunities who maybe wouldn’t have had one earlier in the year,” Shanahan said. “Each week we’re playing with all that we have. There’s no guys behind those guys, so we’re just trying to make sure we get a team ready for Saturday. ... We don’t have that luxury right now.”
The 49ers this week were down to just one healthy quarterback, third-stringer C.J. Beathard, while Nick Mullens is faces Tommy John surgery to repair his throwing elbow and practice squad signal-caller Josh Johnson was placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list on Tuesday.
It forced the team to sign former No. 10 overall draft pick Josh Rosen off the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ practice squad just so Shanahan doesn’t have to rush Garoppolo back to be an emergency backup. Garoppolo had his practice window opened this week also, though Shanahan sounds like he’d prefer to keep Garoppolo out of harm’s way.
“Right now, he’s safe to go out to practice, which we’re only having a walkthrough today, but it’ll be fun for him to throw the ball around a little bit (Wednesday), but we’re going to be very safe with him this week and we’ll see next week, but I’d be very surprised if that changes,” Shanahan said.
Mostert out, Sherman could be done
Additionally, running back Raheem Mostert is expected to miss the remainder of the season after aggravating a high ankle sprain on Sunday and cornerback Richard Sherman’s in jeopardy of missing the last two games with calf stiffness that has bothered him since September.
San Francisco’s transaction wire since September reads like an epic Greek poem, with George Kittle, Sherman and Dee Ford going down Week 1, and then Garoppolo, Nick Bosa, Solomon Thomas and Raheem Mostert getting hurt a week later. Since then, the 49ers have dealt with a barrage of injuries on a near weekly basis, thwarting their shot at defending last season’s NFC championship.
Just getting a team on the field for Saturday, as Shanahan said, has negated the discussion surrounding the balance NFL teams try to find at the end of losing seasons. December is the time when fans and pundits start to look forward to the NFL draft, with some fans hoping their teams lose to improve their draft position.
49ers and the draft
The 49ers are a good example of how that can pay off. They wound up with the No. 2 pick in 2019, which they used on Bosa, and with their early Round 2 selection landed talented play-maker Deebo Samuel. Both were instrumental in the team’s run to the Super Bowl as rookies.
San Francisco as of this week holds the No. 12 spot in the upcoming draft, which bears monitoring in a class expected to have a slew of quarterback prospects go in the first round, should they decide to move on from Garoppolo or find his long-term replacement. The pick could also be used to trade for a quarterback (Lions star Matthew Stafford’s name has been speculated about given the Lions are hiring a new coach and general manager this winter).
For the players, being competitive is innate to being in the NFL, whether the playoffs are on the line or not.
That was confirmed by left tackle Trent Williams, who made the playoffs just twice in his nine seasons with Washington before coming to San Francisco last spring.
“It’s hard to get motivation on like Wednesdays and Thursdays, but when Sunday comes around and Saturday, when guys are gearing up and you get the aura that a game is coming around, the competitive nature just comes out,” Williams said. “You don’t really think about it. You don’t think that there’s ‘nothing to play for.’ You think of the game as a competition, and that competition you want to win. So I think it’s human nature to feel like maybe it’s a little harder to get up for this, even if it doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. But it’s also human nature to be competitive too.”
To further that point, the 49ers are also considering playing Kittle on Saturday. Shanahan said it’s because he wants to send the right message to other players in the locker room: The team’s stars don’t get special treatment.
Kittle had his practice window opened last week after breaking the cuboid bone in his foot in early November. He remains on injured reserve, and Shanahan said the team will be cautious.
“When there’s not many people in the world who can do what you do, and you’re risking your future every time you go out there, that’s not different for George, that’s not different for all the other 52 guys on our roster,” Shanahan said. “Obviously I don’t want to get George hurt or anything like that. That’s why we’re going to be overly cautious with it. That’s what we have been. But if someone’s 100 percent healthy, I can’t look the rest of the team in the eye and tell them they have to play, but George doesn’t. So that’s just part of having a team and part of treating people the right way.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 7:45 AM.
