The San Francisco 49ers offensive line has been a train wreck, but changes do not seem to be approaching anytime soon. Andrew Tiller has rotated in with Jordan Devey, but other than that, the other four spots remain the same. And based on Jim Tomsula's Wednesday comments, and Geep Chryst's Thursday comments, other changes do not seem likely in the near future.
On Wednesday, Tomsula was asked if shoring up the offensive line suggested changes were coming to the unit. His response was "Not right now." Someone followed up asking if that meant down the road, and Tomsula followed up with this:
"Well no, I don't mean to lead in. We're looking at trying to work combinations with the two guards, obviously, and also trying to look at formations and things like that that we can do to help ourselves."
On Thursday, Chryst met with the media, and was asked whether guys like Trenton Brown and Ian Silberman would find themselves getting playing time. He did not directly speak to it, but we can infer some things. He essentially seemed to say they can benefit quite a bit from practice, and those reps allow them to improve without doing serious damage to their confidence.
I'll have the whole transcript later today (and video will be here in a bit), but it basically came off as the team is not expecting them to get into the lineup anytime soon. The 49ers young offensive linemen as a whole have struggled to make an impact. Brandon Thomas was brought in a year and a half ago, and has yet to make an impact. Andrew Tiller took several weeks to finally get his opportunity. And now, Brown and Silberman move along slowly. Both were late round picks, so it's not like we should be expecting the world from them, but given the 49ers OL struggles, it'd be nice to see some kind of change at some point.
It is entirely possible the coaching staff is just sand-bagging on this, and we see Brown and/or Silberman get opportunities sooner rather than later. I do not expect this, but I suppose it is possible. The bye week seems like the best opportunity for that, although I imagine we could also just expect the offense to continue its aimless wandering.