49ers Defensive Line Injuries: Déjà Vu All Over Again, Every Year

Seven defensive linemen hurt three weeks into the season, and anybody who's followed this team since 2020 has seen this exact movie before. At some point bad luck stops being an answer.

I have a note on my phone called Who's Hurt. I started it in September 2020, the afternoon Bosa and Solomon Thomas both tore ACLs on that MetLife turf in the same game, because I wanted to keep track and I figured it'd be a one year thing. It's in its seventh season now. I've never deleted it. I scrolled through it on the couch last night with the TV on mute, and somewhere around 2024 my wife asked what I was reading, and I said the history of my own suffering, and she said that's the most 49ers thing you've ever said.

This week I added seven names. All defensive linemen. It's week 3.

Seven guys, one room

Let me just lay out what happened, straight, before I start yelling, because the facts are bad enough on their own.

Alfred Collins tore his patellar tendon in practice in Melbourne, the Tuesday before the opener, right before the team got to 11 on 11 work. He was the starting defensive tackle. He's out for the season before the season started.

Sam Okuayinonu broke his right foot in the last practice before the flight to Australia. He already had a plate in that foot from an old injury, and Kyle's description was basically that he stepped on it and it broke. Surgery, injured reserve, and they're hoping he's back at some point this year. This is the guy who started 12 games last season because Bosa went down. The replacement got replaced.

CJ West, who started both games at tackle, went on IR this week with a bone chip in his knee. He's having surgery, and the word is he should be back later in the season. To fill the hole they signed Naquan Jones off Minnesota's practice squad and brought Viliami Fehoko Jr. onto ours.

James Thompson Jr. has a high ankle sprain from the Miami game and is going to be out a while. Romello Height, the rookie, got his first career sack against the Dolphins and broke his hand in that same game, had surgery this week, and hadn't practiced by Thursday. Kyle called him an outside chance for Sunday. Mykel Williams, last year's first round pick, is on PUP while his knee finishes coming back from the ACL he tore last November, which had cartilage damage on top of it. The earliest he can play is week 5.

And then Thursday, Nick Bosa pulled his calf in practice and is out a few weeks. I already wrote about what the Bosa injury means for him and his future here, and I'm not doing it twice. For this column he's one name out of seven, and honestly that's the scariest part.

Seven. Three of them got hurt at practice, not in a game.

I've seen this movie, and so have you

If you just started watching this team, maybe this feels like a freak week. It isn't. It's a rerun.

2020 was the MetLife game and a season that fell apart one body at a time. Then the Super Bowl in Vegas, February 2024, when Dre Greenlaw tore his Achilles running onto the field off the sideline. Not on a hit. Jogging onto the field. I was standing in my brother's living room and I remember the whole room going quiet the same way a room goes quiet when somebody drops a glass.

Then 2024, the season I still can't talk about calmly. Christian McCaffrey missed the first eight games with Achilles tendinitis in both legs, came back, and got hurt again four games later. Brandon Aiyuk tore his ACL in week 7. Trent Williams got through ten games and then the ankle took the rest. Javon Hargrave was done after three. We finished 6 and 11, and by the adjusted games lost numbers the 49ers were the most injured team in football, and it wasn't close. More than 22 games' worth ahead of the next team.

Then 2025. Bosa's right ACL in week 3. Fred Warner, the heart of the whole defense, with a dislocated and broken ankle in the Tampa game. Mykel Williams, the rookie we drafted to play next to Bosa, tearing his ACL in November. Kittle tearing his Achilles in the wild card game. By season's end we were right back among the five most injured teams in the league.

And now 2026, three weeks in. Before a single defensive lineman even showed up on this week's list, the offense had already lost Ricky Pearsall for the year and watched De'Zhaun Stribling's ankle turn into surgery. The full out list from Tuesday is in the plus 42 column, and it's gotten longer since.

Different years, different body parts, different positions. Same feeling in my stomach.

When does bad luck stop being the answer?

Football is violent. Everybody gets hurt. I know. I've heard it from every guy at work who roots for a team that isn't this one, and I've said it myself to calm down after a bad Sunday. One season at the top of the injury charts, fine, that's variance, that's a bad bounce year. Two, you start squinting.

But this is the thing I keep coming back to, and it's why I'm writing this instead of watching highlights. The 49ers keep ending up at the top of that list. The top. Year after year, with different players, different coordinators, different roster builds. At some point the one thing that stays the same has to be asked about.

So I'll say what I think, and I want to be clear that it's what I think, as a fan who's been counting.

My take: put the whole operation under the microscope

I don't know that the training staff caused any of these injuries. Nobody outside that building does, and I'm not going to pretend I've got some inside information about Alfred Collins's patellar tendon. A lot of this list could be plain bad luck. A broken foot with a plate already in it, a hand that gets caught in a facemask, a bone chip. Some of it just happens.

What I do know is the pattern. And the pattern is not normal.

When a team is this hurt this often, for this long, the organization owes it to itself and to us to look at everything. How they practice. How hard, how long, how many padded days. How they manage workload for guys coming off major surgery. What the recovery protocols look like between a Thursday in Melbourne and a Sunday back home. Strength and conditioning, the offseason program, the injury prevention work, the rehab plans, and the medical calls about when a guy goes back out there. We've already watched Stribling go back out on a sprained ankle in August and end up having surgery, and I still don't have a good explanation for that one.

And if that review turns up something, I want changes. Real ones. Methods, schedules, and yes, people. If that means new faces in the training room or the weight room or the medical side, then new faces it is. I'm not saying fire everybody tomorrow, because I'd be making up a cause I can't prove. I'm saying that after seven seasons of this note on my phone, replacing personnel should be on the table, and if the front office won't even put it on the table, that tells me something too.

Other teams have bad years. We have bad eras.

Sunday, and who's left

Arizona's here at 1:05. The pass rush is going to be Ogbo Okoronkwo from the August signing spree, whoever of the rookies can go, and a tackle rotation that includes a guy who was on the Vikings practice squad last week. Raheem is going to have to manufacture pressure with blitzes and hope Fred Warner can be in three places. We're 2 and 0 and the depth chart I trusted in August is mostly a list of IR designations now. The rest of the season is on the schedule hub, if you want to count the weeks until Okuayinonu and West and Mykel might be back like I have.

I'll be watching. I always am. That's the whole problem with being one of us, you can't stop watching even when you know how the rerun ends.

Somebody in that building should open my note. It's free. I'll send it to anybody who asks.

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