A Month Became Ten Weeks and Surgery. Still Trust the 49ers Training Staff?

Last week it was a month and no surgery. Now the rookie's on IR, the kicker's home sick, Renardo Green's shoulder is barking, and Miami's coming Sunday.

Monday I wrote that I was done giving this medical staff the benefit of the doubt. Wednesday they went and proved me right, and I'd give just about anything to have been wrong.

De'Zhaun Stribling had surgery on his left ankle this morning. Kyle stood up there and said it's going to be "close to 10 weeks." He's headed to IR. The kid we took at 33, the one who looked like a starter all camp, is gone until somewhere around Thanksgiving.

Remember what we got told last week? At least a month. Surgery wasn't the plan. Get some more opinions, see how it calms down.

A month became ten weeks. No surgery became surgery. Call it a slipped timeline if you want. I call it somebody being flat wrong about an ankle they'd already been wrong about once.

They had two chances with this ankle

I keep coming back to Melbourne. First quarter, the ankle turns when he gets bumped on a route. He comes out. He goes back in. Two series later he plants on it, nobody touches him, and he's on the cart.

Non contact. Read that again. Nobody hit him the second time. The ankle just gave out, the same ankle the tent had just looked at and said was fine.

That was chance number one, and they blew it. Chance number two was the diagnosis, and "a month, no surgery" lasted about five days before the knife came out. I'm sorry, but I don't know how you watch that sequence and still trust the people in charge of it. I sure don't.

And this isn't even his first thing. He banged up his shoulder in camp too. We're talking about a rookie wideout who's been hurt twice before his NFL career is one game old, and the second one got made worse on their watch.

Oh, and the kicker's sick

You'd think that'd be enough bad news for one Wednesday. Nope.

Eddy Piñeiro didn't practice. Illness. Four days before the home opener against Miami, our kicker's home sick, and I'm sitting here hoping it's a 24 hour thing and not the kind that runs through a locker room.

Renardo Green was limited with a shoulder. Kittle was limited with the Achilles. Juszczyk was limited with a finger. Jake Tonges is getting season ending surgery on his knee, so Brayden Willis got pulled up off the practice squad.

I read that practice report twice looking for good news.

Nothing. It reads like a hospital intake form.

What exactly do these people do all day

Look, I know a sick kicker isn't the trainer's fault. Guys catch bugs. Green's shoulder might be nothing. I'm not pretending the training staff gave Piñeiro the flu.

But I'm a fan, I get to be unfair, and I'm tired. Every single week there's a new list and every time the list is longer than it should be. After the injury year we lived through last season, this was supposed to be the thing they fixed. It's Week 2 and we've already got a rookie under the knife, a tight end done for the year, and a practice report that won't fit on one screen.

The stuff they actually control is who goes back in and how long an injury really takes. On Stribling they missed both. Badly. And they missed in the exact direction they always miss, too early and too optimistic, which is why I can't write it off as bad luck anymore.

If I screwed up at my job twice in five days on the same thing, I'd be having a very uncomfortable meeting. I'd love to know if anybody in Santa Clara is having that meeting. My guess is no.

Sunday's a mess now

The receiver room was already thin before today. Now Stribling's gone for the better part of the season, and Purdy gets Evans, Deebo, Robinson and a lot of praying nothing else pops.

Tight end's thinner. The kicker might be on the couch with soup. The corner's got a sore shoulder. We're supposed to handle Miami and I'm genuinely nervous about a home opener, which is a sentence I shouldn't have to type about a team that just won by twenty.

Kyle, please go down the hall and have the conversation. Because if it's another rookie's ankle in November and another "close to" timeline that turns into surgery, I don't want to hear about bad luck.

De'Zhaun, heal up for real this time. Take all ten weeks. Take eleven if you need them. Just don't let anybody in that building rush you again.

I already went off about how we got here in Monday's column on the tent sending him back out. The Miami game lives on the Week 2 preview, and everything else is on the 49ers page.

For the full list of who is out and who is questionable right now, check the current 49ers injury report.

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