The San Francisco 49ers will get Nick Bosa and George Kittle back at practice this week. Kyle Shanahan explained what the workload would look like for both:
“With three days before we go, we’re balancing it out with both of them. We don’t want them to go three days in a row, so we’re going to do a little on some of these days, and more on one. Both of them are on a little different schedule. It’s a little different now.
Usually, we have these three-day practices, then we get three days off. And then we kind
of settle everything that bonus Monday of the week. We already had our three days off because of our travel deal. Now we have these three bonus practices. Then we’ll get on our plane and go. Our Monday where we kind of settle everything will be our Saturday in Australia.”
Shanahan said this coming Saturday will be Monday for the team, just because they’re creatures of habit and because the schedule is generally the same as in most years.
When Kittle spoke a couple of Sundays ago, he said if he wasn’t going to play in Melbourne, it would make more sense for him to stay back. Shanahan was asked if the team felt like they needed to decide between Kittle playing over the next couple of days, to determine whether he’d travel with the team:
“I don’t think you have to do anything. I think if we didn’t think he was going to play, though, and it was looking that way, I think it’d be much nicer to make that decision before we left instead of having him go through all that. It’s also a long time that we’re out there. So to be away from the team for a week, not for camaraderie or anything, but just the training staff and things like that, and being away from meetings is also a big deal too. But, hopefully these three days that we have, these three practices will go the right way and make it an easy decision to get him on the plane.”
As for Nick Bosa, Shanahan said he initially was missing practice due to tendinitis. But more recently, it’s more of a maintenance thing where the team is being smart with their star defensive player:
“I mean, you guys see him on the field working out. He’s feeling great. We’re deciding how much we want to do in team settings going against people and stuff before we get out there. And that’s what we’ve kind of put out for these three days. Again, they’re not going to go all of them, but we’re going to get them in in these three days. And hopefully that continues what we’ve seen when they haven’t been out there, and then we’ll be on to Australia with them.”
And here’s John Lynch on Bosa:
“Nick’s pretty blessed with tremendous genes and was going along great. So, the intention when he came back was that he was right. When he upped the activity, he got sore. And so he backed off. And we put together a really good plan that thinks that we believe will have him ready for Australia. And I always believe that the athlete knows their body better than anyone, and Nick certainly takes that to the nth degree. He knows his body extremely well and knows what it takes to have him ready. We saw him one year in a contract year come in here like on a Thursday and play pretty well on Sunday. So, got a lot of faith in his ability to do that.”
Shanahan would not name who the starting left guard is or the backup running back, saying he doesn’t know and that was the truth. He added that adding Jarrett Patterson makes the offensive line fluid, and the team will use the three practices to figure that out.
Here’s more from Shanahan on his expectations and the plan for Patterson:
To get him in the group right away. We love that he has some flex at center and guard. It’s still fluid in all our positions in there, so I want to see where he fits in the group in these three days. That is the hard thing with not just going to Australia, but just not opening on a Sunday. The time that we’re usually used to making some of these decisions have all been sped up. So, I want to get him in the group, see where he fits, just see him in person, see how he can help us at guard, how he can help us at center, and how he stacks up to the other guys.”
Drew Greenlaw will be on a maintenance schedule all year. He won’t practice three days in a row. The team is still getting to know Mike Evans. Shanahan said he’s never practiced three days in a row. He’ll be on a similar schedule that Trent Williams and Christian McCaffrey have been on:
“Mike’s still coming back from his injury. We should, I think we’ll get him down there the first Saturday, which I look at as a Monday, but possibly on one of these three days but he’s ahead of schedule, doing good. But, we know with Mike and where he is at in his career, we’ll definitely have to treat him differently.”
Safety Malik Mustapha returns to practice for the first time in over a month. The same is true for Dominick Puni, Vederian Lowe, Kurtis Rourke, and Kyle Juszczyk.
According to The Athletic’s Matt Barrows, Mike Evans, Gracen Halton, Renardo Green, Brayden Willis, Luke Gifford, Jacob Cowing, and Nate Hobbs were all working on the side.
Nick Bosa, Romello Height, and Ephesians Prysock were not seen. But they may have made an appearance once the media left practice after the first 15 minutes or so.
