The 49ers Won by Twenty and I Spent the Flight Home Worrying About an Ankle

27 to 7 over the Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and two guys came out of it hurt. De'Zhaun Stribling's Achilles is intact and it's the ankle. Jake Tonges did his MCL. Here's who got hurt, how bad it looks, and who just cramped up.

We won by twenty. I want to say that first because I've read this thing back twice and it reads like we lost. 27 to 7 on the other side of the planet against the team everybody's handing the division to, and Purdy looked like a guy who slept on the plane, which is more than I can say for myself on a normal Tuesday.

And I still went to bed annoyed.

Because two of them came off that field hurt, and one of those two is the guy I've been telling everybody about since July.

De'Zhaun Stribling, left ankle. He tweaked it early, and then he did the thing you always want to see, jogging on the sideline, testing it, going back out there. Seven minutes and change left in the half he ran a route, pulled up, and couldn't put any weight on the leg. They walked him to the tent and then he went off for X rays and that was his night. No catches. A rookie's first regular season game in the NFL and he finishes it in a cart in Australia.

The Achilles is intact. They checked, Shanahan said so after, and if you were watching the way he went down you already know why that was the first thing out of everyone's mouth. Non contact, grabbing at the back of the leg, an ankle that wouldn't hold him. My stomach went through the floor. It's the ankle, and nobody knew the magnitude of it on Thursday night because the imaging that answers it was sixteen hours and one ocean away.

So it's just his ankle. Thank God. I don't think I'd have handled the other one.

Jake Tonges, MCL. This one is worse and it's getting a fraction of the attention because he's the second tight end and the first one is George Kittle. Second quarter, knee, carted straight to the locker room, never came back. Shanahan's exact words were "it wasn't good," and then, "it's not an ACL, it's MCL, I believe, but there's some issues with it that we've got to see how it is."

You can feel a coach picking around something there. He's telling you the ligament that ends a season is fine and in the same breath telling you not to relax about it. They can't know the real answer until they're home and he's in a tube in Santa Clara, and the tone on Thursday was not the tone of a man expecting a two week absence.

Tonges matters more than the depth chart makes him look. He caught 34 balls for 293 yards and five touchdowns last year when Kittle was hurt, they paid him two years and eight million to stay, and this offense runs so much twelve personnel that TE2 isn't a backup so much as a part time starter. Lose him and you're asking Kittle, at his age, coming off an Achilles, to take snaps that were supposed to belong to somebody else. In a season that already lost Alfred Collins to a torn patellar tendon on a practice field in Melbourne.

Two more, and these are the good kind.

Trent Williams and Christian McCaffrey both cramped up and both came back. Williams went during the 99 yard drive, which, sure, go ahead and cramp on the longest drive of the night. McCaffrey had his own moment. Every time that man touches his hamstring my whole house goes quiet. It was cramps. They played. Nineteen hours on a plane and a stadium built for cricket will do that to a thirty seven year old tackle and a running back with that many miles on him.

Everybody else got through it. Kittle played on the Achilles. Bosa played on the knee. Juszczyk played with the finger. James Thompson Jr was questionable with the hamstring all week and suited up. Prysock, Jordan James, Jordan Watkins, Bethune, Cruz and Rourke were the inactives and none of that was news.

What actually bugs me about it is the shape of it. We came into this year with a defensive line that was already half gone, I wrote about it Thursday afternoon in the Week 1 preview and felt like a crank for going on about it, and then we go win the game 27 to 7 and the injuries land on the other side of the ball anyway. Receiver and tight end. The two rooms that looked fine.

Is anybody else at the point where a win feels like a toll booth?

The honest version: one ankle we don't have a number on yet, one knee that a head coach didn't want to talk about, and a short week with Miami at Levi's waiting on the other end of a flight nobody's body is going to forgive. If Stribling is a few weeks and Tonges is a month, we got off easy and I'll say so. If it's the other way, week one in Australia cost more than it looked like it did at 8:30 on a Thursday night.

The football part of the night is in the reaction column, and it was a good night. This one is the invoice.

I'll update the depth chart when the MRIs come back. Week to week stuff is on the schedule hub, and the rest of it lives on the 49ers hub.

Twenty point win. Two guys hurt. Somebody explain to me how you're supposed to feel about that.

More coverage: Bay Area Sports section · Bay Area Sports · Bay Area Sports Blog home