It Is August and the 49ers Are Already Hurt. Again.
Nobody has played a snap that counts. Nobody has tackled anybody in anger. It is the first week of August, and I am already reading an injury report long enough to need a scroll bar. Check the calendar, check the roster, check my blood pressure. Yep. It is 49ers August.
Pearsall again. Of course it is Pearsall.
Ricky Pearsall is scheduled for surgery on his right knee and he is done for the season. Done. In August. Before a single kickoff. I have watched this kid get hit with more bad luck than any player should have to carry and every single time he digs out of it, something else lands on him. I am not going to write a smooth paragraph about it. It is just brutal, and I am tired for him.
And he was supposed to be the answer to the exact problem we have had for two years, which is a receiver room that gets thin the second anybody sneezes. Which brings me to the thing that actually has me pacing.
Four receivers standing on the sideline at the same time
There was a day at this camp where four of the top wideouts were not practicing. Four. Evans, Pearsall, Kirk with the calf, Stribling with the hamstring. That is the entire top of the depth chart standing on a sideline in shorts while Purdy throws to guys who are going to be selling insurance in October.
I know what the answer is. The answer is "it is camp, you hold guys out, everybody does it." Fine. Except we are not everybody. We are the team that has spent three straight seasons explaining that we would be great if healthy, and at some point that stops being an explanation and starts being a description of the franchise.
The defensive line is doing it too
Bosa is easing back in after tearing his ACL in Week 3 last year, and I am glad he is on the grass at all, but "easing back in" is not a phrase that makes me relax. Mykel Williams is on PUP with the knee. Cam Sample's knee, Romello Height's elbow, Keion White's adductor, Gracen Halton's knee, Andrew Farmer's back. That is a full defensive line rotation on a training table.
Kittle is on PUP with the Achilles. Vederian Lowe has a high ankle sprain, which is the injury that always takes twice as long as they tell you it will. Kaelon Black's adductor. And this is the first week.
Say it out loud: this is not variance anymore
Here is the part I am not supposed to say in polite company. When one team leads the league in soft tissue injuries and season-enders and PUP list residents year after year after year, at a certain point you stop calling it bad luck. Bad luck is a season. This is a pattern. This is the identity of the franchise now, and it has been for long enough that I would like somebody to look at the practice structure, the sports science staff, the ramp-up, the whole thing, and tell me why it keeps being us.
Because it is always us. Every single year the Bay Area gets told this is the most talented roster in football and every single year we watch that roster get carried off in pieces starting in the first week of August and finishing with somebody's knee in the divisional round.
What it means for the season, honestly
Shanahan's whole offense is built on stacking bodies who can do multiple things. Motion, condensed sets, tight ends who block like tackles and run like receivers. That machine needs Kittle. That machine needs three healthy receivers minimum. Take those pieces off and you get the version of this offense we have all watched too many times, where Purdy is holding the ball for three and a half seconds and everybody in the building is yelling at the television about the same thing.
Can they survive August? Yes. Guys come off PUP. Camp bumps heal. Bosa is going to play. I am not writing the obituary in the first week of August, I am not that far gone.
But I have seen this movie
I have seen it enough times to know how it ends. It ends with a January game where the announcers spend the whole broadcast listing who is not out there, and some guy on the postgame says injuries are part of football, and I sit in a quiet living room in the Bay Area with a cold plate of food and no answer.
It is August 3rd. Nobody has hit anybody. Get healthy. Please, for one year, just get healthy.
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