While a bye awaits next week, the 49ers face a crucial game against the Rams on Sunday. And they’ll be without at least one key offensive piece.
Kyle Shanahan confirmed Monday that Kyle Juszczyk — who said he both fractured and dislocated his ring finger — underwent surgery and will likely miss this weekend’s game, but will be back after the bye.
The last time Juszczyk missed time, Ross Dwelley was employed at fullback. He was the first name Shanahan mentioned when asked about filling that void.
“We’ve got a number of tight ends on our roster,” Shanahan said. “We try to cross train at that position. So you know whether it’s Ross or sometimes it’s [George] Kittle, we’ve got [Tyler] Kroft, we’ve got Charlie [Woerner], we use those all those guys pretty similar.”
Also injured in Sunday’s game were Deebo Samuel and Dre Greenlaw. Greenlaw sustained a calf injury and tried to return before sitting for the remainder of the game. Samuel was dealing with a hamstring injury during the game and came in with pain on Monday. Both are considered day-to-day.
Charvarius Ward, Shanahan said, got out of the game unscathed, despite an atypically poor performance. He seemed to attribute part of that to the fact that Ward — who was “pretty adamant” about playing — only went full speed a “little bit” in Friday’s practice.
That’s been a major component of the accumulation of these injuries; the lack of practice time. Joe Staley said the 49ers need to fix their issues in practice, and while they returned a number of players against the Chiefs, they’ve had a substantial number of missed practices from key players over the last several weeks.
Returning players are typically limited, too, so they don’t get a full run in practice on the more strenuous days. Fridays are generally just walkthroughs.
“I think when you don’t practice… it does have an effect on these guys,” Shanahan said. “And that stuff adds up, especially when it started happening a little bit last week.”
There were two other names mentioned by Shanahan.
Jason Verrett is still in his three-week return window and the team will have until Wednesday to activate him. With a bye next week, you’d think the team would at least activate him, rather than reverting him to PUP and ending his season, even if he’s not ready this week.
As for Arik Armstead, Shanahan seemed to believe he’d return after the bye when he was asked about him last week.
On Monday, he expressed hope he could potentially play this weekend, but it wasn’t an overly rosy assessment.
“We’re missing him a lot. It’s been tough without him,” Shanahan said. “Hope to have him back this week. Still continuing his rehab and we’ll see how it goes. But it’s not just a thing we have a timeline on because it’s not an exact injury. We just have to wait until it’s not flaring up as much.”