Chris Foerster and the coaching staff have been tasked with managing the injuries for the San Francisco 49ers. Four players were added to the injury list ahead of Wednesday’s practice.
If you include the players on the Injured Reserve, the Niners were without 23 players. That’s enough to field an offense and a defense.
The plan was to give Robert Jones and Carver Willis some work at left guard with the starters, while Connor Colby would play right guard. Unfortunately for Willis, he’s in the concussion
protocol. Add in Brett Toth, and that meant Foerster didn’t have enough bodies to play musical chairs with the interior line on Wednesday.
Foerster said, “I had a lot more in store,” but ultimately only ended up using Jones at left guard.
Foerster was asked if the 49ers would need to cancel their joint practice next week. He said, “It’s yet to come up in anything I’ve heard. Doesn’t mean it hasn’t been discussed, but shoot, I think we’ll have plenty of players.”
He understands that physicality is necessary to get your team ready for the regular season: “If you’re not practicing football hard, you can get through camp easily without injuries, a couple of muscles here and there. But if you’re practicing hitting, contact, style of football, whatever it is — so yeah, that’s not come up at this point.”
Foerster made it sound like the team is taking caution with some of the injuries, as they should. For example, Trent Williams, who isn’t injured, is on a rep count. Foerster had a phenomenal quote that applies to every player: “You always have to be careful that reps in July don’t take away from reps in January.”
Foerster continued, “It seems like we’re very healthy. I mean, we have injuries. We have dings and bumps and bruises, and guys are missing practices. If you have two deep at every position, you can practice. You can always adjust with the threes. One, two, threes. Threes are hard to stay healthy through the course of training camp if you’re practicing football hard.”
The 49ers have adjusted their practice schedule to avoid injuries. The league even mandated specific days off so teams aren’t practicing consecutive days in a row. Yet, despite the 49ers not having double-digit practices yet, nearly a quarter of their team has “dings and bumps and bruises.”
