Packers and pains for 49ers
Short week: Amid wave of grim news, schedule kicks S. F. while it’s down
The 49ers are in the midst of a short week, with only about 97 hours between the end of Sunday’s loss to the Seahawks and the start of Thursday’s game against the Packers. That’s treacherous territory.
Despite all the bravado about being excited to play another game right away, so that the 49ers can “flush” the bad taste in their mouth from the Seattle loss, it seems like a particularly precarious time to operate on a short week.
Because, in case you haven’t noticed, the 49ers are having devastating injury issues. The seasonlong plague got way, way more serious with the Monday morning reports that tight end George Kittle broke a bone in his foot and that quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo aggravated his high ankle sprain, and that both could miss most of the rest of the season.
The 49ers’ dreams of making it back to the playoffs, let alone the Super Bowl, appear to be drowning in a deluge of torn ligaments, damaged joints and busted bones. The wellbalanced Super Bowl team seems like a vague memory. And now, in this season of pain, the players are in the midst of the kind of week many of them believe leads to more injuries.
It’s hard to exactly measure the rate of NFL injuries. All the categories of doubtful, questionable, out, injured reserve and physically unable to perform, and the moving of players in and out of such classifications, makes it difficult to compare week to week, team to team, year to year whether there is an uptick in injuries.
But it certainly seems as though there is a more serious rash this season. The 49ers aren’t the only ones to miss big names: Giants running back Saquon Barkley, Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott, Cleveland receiver Odell Beckham, Denver linebacker Von Miller — all are among those players effectively lost for the season. Other stars — Christian McCaffrey, Jamal Adams, Julian Edelman, Zach Ertz — have missed significant time.
The 49ers, in particular, have been absolutely hammered with injuries. On pro football reference. com, which lists injury statuses, the 49ers are tied with the Giants and the Patriots for the longest listing — 25 entrants.
After each game, head coach Kyle Shanahan grimly reads the names of the injured. Over the weeks, the list has included the most important players on the team: Nick Bosa, Garoppolo, Kittle, Deebo Samuel, Richard Sherman, Dee Ford, Solomon Thomas and the entire running back triumvirate of Raheem Mostert, Tevin Coleman and Jeff Wilson. And that’s just for starters.
Some are out for the season. Some, like Garoppolo, tried to keep playing. Now the bangedup and injured and the backups will have only a few days to try to get ready to take on the Green Bay Packers.
Are short weeks more dangerous to players? Though players have long asserted that Thursday night games lead to more injuries, their anecdotal feelings have not been statistically proved. After years of claiming the data showed no statistcal increase in injuries on Thursday nights, a study of the 2017 season did, in fact, show a slight uptick in injuries. Yet another study published in May in the American Journal of Sports Medicine concluded, “A short rest period between games is not associated with increased rates of observed injuries reported in NFL game books; rather, our data suggest there are significantly fewer injuries for Thursday night games compared with games played on regular rest. Future research correlating rest and quarterback injury rates is warranted.”
Still, anyone watching Thursday night games can see for themselves the sluggish play involved, and all athletes know that fatigue and a lack of sharpness can lead to injuries.
A few years back, Sherman wrote a piece for the Players’ Tribune titled, “Why I Hate Thursday Night Football,” calling it a “poopfest” and detailing how players’ bodies feel day by day between games.
“I just don’t understand why the NFL says it’s taking a stand on player safety, then increases the risks its players face by making them play on Thursday, before their bodies are ready,” Sherman wrote.
In the same vein, it’s difficult to determine whether and why there are more significant injuries this year. The easy answer is that players were taken out of their offseason routines during the pandemic lockdown, unable to train or receive treatment in the they were accustomed.
In addition, there were no preseason games. Although most players abhor the preseason, there is a rampup element to it, a way to get bodies ( and minds) ready for the punishment of the real season.
Sherman pointed that out back in August, noting that even if veterans like himself play little in preseason games, there’s a use for them.
“You want younger guys to go out there and get some real preseason action and not have their first NFL reps be live bullets and really count,” Sherman said, adding that with facilities having been closed, conditioning would be a concern.
“Obviously, guys are going to be pros. They’re going to find ways to get it done. But it’s not reasonable to expect them to be training at facilities at the level that you would need to be compete at the NFL level. … There are some of us who need to go out there and get some reps before the real thing happens.”
Scientific data is nice. But, as Steve Young used to say, “perception is reality.” The reality is that the 49ers are being crushed by injuries. And the perception is that this short week won’t do them any favors.