Tramaine Brock has chance to play this weekend, according to Eric Branch

The San Francisco 49ers have been shorthanded at the cornerback position lately, but they might be getting closer to getting one player back. Tramaine Brock missed last week's game with a hamstring injury, but Eric Branch tweeted that there is still a chance he could play this weekend. He said the team will not know for sure until the end of the week, which is not exactly a surprising answer.

I consider this moderately news-worthy because last week at this time, we were hearing he was not going to play Sunday against the Giants. Branch was the first to report Brock would miss last week's game, and a later report suggested he could miss a second game as well. This announcement at least means Brock is making progress from his hamstring strain.

In his absence this past week, the 49ers played Perrish Cox and Chris Culliver on the outside, then moved Dontae Johnson into the slot when they played in the nickel. The team brought in Drayton Florence and Dominique Franks for workouts, while also signing Marcus Cromartie to the practice squad.

Last week, there were reports that Quinton Patton was playing some cornerback in practice. This is not a surprising development. When a team is short-handed, they will have end of the roster players and practice squad members handle other positions as needed. The 49ers are short-handed, so the more bodies the better.

Even with all these injury concerns, the 49ers secondary is still doing some great work. The 49ers defense leads the NFL with 16 interceptions. Four of them have come from linebackers, but even still, this secondary is a play-making group. The good news is usually that they do not give up a ton of big plays in attempting to force turnovers. That just makes it so much more enjoyable watching this ball-hawking defense.