You knew there would be a moment this season when all the 49ers’ new hope, momentum and excitement would hit a little bit of a wall. You knew there would be bumps and hiccups and maybe even a scare or two.
You knew that this charmed Jimmy G era might have to go through a few uncharming things before the 49ers really got to the good stuff, if they could survive it all.
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But you probably didn’t think it would happen in the first few minutes of their first preseason game of 2018, and you know that they didn’t think so, either.
Welcome to Thursday night’s first half of the first live action of 2018, when six important 49ers went down with injuries all in a row, first linebacker Malcolm Smith, then tight end George Kittle, running back Matt Breida, defensive lineman Solomon Thomas, backup tackle Garry Gilliam and finally linebacker Eli Harold all hit the ground and didn’t get up for a while.
Football, obviously, is a violent sport. Injuries are a natural part of the game. But for all this to happen in the first half of exhibition football leading up to this highly anticipated 49ers season, with those six players …
“It was crazy,” quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo said after the 49ers’ eventual 24-21 victory over the Cowboys at Levi’s Stadium. “I don’t know how many (injuries) it was total, but it’s never good to see. It’s football, those things happen, you just try to minimize it as much as possible. But it’s tough to see in preseason.”
Coach Kyle Shanahan suggested that Kittle and Breida’s shoulder injuries seemed to be the most serious — he said they almost certainly would miss time — while Thomas and Gilliam suffered concussions, Smith had a hamstring injury and Harold had a knee injury.
Maybe none of them are serious. Maybe one or two will linger for a few weeks, maybe into Week 1 of the regular season when the 49ers play the Vikings in Minnesota. Add that to a few other main players who didn’t suit up Thursday — including Richard Sherman, Arik Armstead and Fred Warner — and maybe the 49ers are getting just a little more banged up than any team would want to be, with three games left in the preseason and next week’s big joint practices with the Texans in Houston.
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And here’s what struck me hardest while watching the procession of 49er injuries on the Levi’s turf: This was meaningful mostly because of what’s at stake for the 49ers in 2018, what’s possible for them to achieve, and what they’ve built.
Which got a bit battered around on Thursday.
You don’t care much if a bad team suffers a lot of injuries in the preseason. But when a team with promise hits a run of misfortune, that’s not a minor situation, not in any league. Especially when it’s a team that has been down for a while, and is just ramping itself back up into relevance.
“It’s what scares you about training camp, it’s what scares you about the preseason,” Shanahan said. “Kinda just want the game to end when those things start happening, because you want those guys when the season starts.
“But we also need to practice to get better, so it’s just something you’ve gotta deal with, it’s part of this business.”
The 49ers probably planned to pull Garoppolo and most of the first-unit offense and defense after one or two series, anyway, but once players started going down, there was obviously no reason to risk Garoppolo or any other major player. So out they all came.
And you have to wonder: Will this affect how Shanahan plays the rest of the preseason? He probably has lost Kittle and Breida at least for the next week, why not sit them until September? And how much does he want to expose Garoppolo, DeForest Buckner, Joe Staley, Jerick McKinnon, Marquise Goodwin, Jaquiski Tartt and all their other key players?
That’s the other point: The 49ers have a lot of good players, all of a sudden. Possibly enough good players — if they remain healthy — for playoff contention. And nobody gets into playoff contention by playing starters in August.
Will watching those six players go down in this game change your approach the rest of the exhibition season, Kyle?
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“Not really,” Shanahan said. “You only have a certain amount of guys. You don’t want anybody to have to play the whole game.”
The 49ers are deeper than they’ve been in a while, also, so the relevant response right now is to see what their backups can do in these next few games — the same way some of the guys lower in the current depth chart looked pretty good on Thursday.
At linebacker, if Smith is out — and remember, he missed all of last season with a torn pectoral muscle — Warner, the rookie, could see more time, presuming he gets healthy. And the 49ers, of course, have Reuben Foster there, though he will be suspended for the first two regular-season games and had multiple injury issues last season.
At tight end, if Kittle is out for a while, the 49ers have nominal starter Garrett Celek as well as Cole Hikutini, and Shanahan also has a few other versatile weapons like fullback Kyle Juszczyk and maybe McKinnon to deploy as extra weapons in the passing game.
On the defensive line, if Thomas is out and Armstead can’t get back to full speed, the 49ers have rookie Jullian Taylor, who flashed in lots of action on Thursday, and backup Sheldon Day.
At running back, if Breida misses time, the 49ers have McKinnon as the starter, and several other interesting backups, including Joe Williams and Raheem Mostert.
The 49ers cannot lose Garoppolo for any prolonged time. They cannot lose Buckner, Staley, Foster (beyond his suspension), Tartt and several others. They have a lot on the line — more than they’ve had since 2014, which is four coaches and many, many millions of dollars ago.
This is not a do-or-die season for this franchise, but it’s a significant one, and as long as the six injuries on Thursday are not all major, the 49ers can get through this. But that gruesome first half was a sign: you can’t always have a breakthrough without a few bad breaks along the way.
The great teams get through it. We don’t know what the 2018 49ers will be yet. But we might find out a lot of things a lot sooner than we thought.
— Reported from Santa Clara
(Top photo: Kelley L Cox/USA TODAY Sports)
