The San Francisco 49ers injured reserve gets one more rookie added. The team did not activate wide receiver DeAndre Smelter from the NFI list, and so they must place him on season-ending injured reserve. Smelter tore his ACL last fall, causing his draft stock to slip. He opened training camp on the NFI list, and had his practice window activated three weeks ago. He could practice over the last three weeks, but moving forward, he can no longer practice with the team. He can still attend meetings and work with trainers.
Smelter will spend the next four weeks on IR. Once the season ends, the roster reverts to the offseason 90-man roster, and so he will be removed from IR. He will be able to take part in the 49ers offseason workout program in April, May and June, and then training camp next August. We don't really know his full injury status, but Geep Chryst briefly discussed Smelter on Thursday:
What do you know about WR DeAndre Smelter now that you didn't know two weeks ago?
"Great question. For everyone that's been here on a daily basis, he's a hard working kid with a nice demeanor, but you're part of a team but you're not really a part of the team because you've got to go rehab and you've got to go through all that. But first off, his body type is unique. It's different than probably some of the other receivers. He's a little bigger, he's got a little longer arms, bigger hands, but his demeanor is such that I think he's going to be just fine on some of those shallow cross routes, catches in traffic. Trying to find out then in practice, is he an outside receiver, does he have slot capabilities? But what we've found out is I think we're excited to have him on the team. I think he's a hard worker. I think he's excited to be practicing and I'm really excited about his future."
Do you think he can play this season?
"I would defer to [vice president of football operations Jeff Ferguson] Ferg, you know what I mean by that, because he is coming off of a major injury, a little bit like we've treated [G/C Daniel Kilgore] Kilgy, for example. We would love to throw him out there. We'd love to dress 65 guys and throw him out there and have success with him because I think he's going to have success. But, we defer back to the medical people. I think he's made great strides. He looks pretty good out there in practice. That's what's great about preseason games. It's probably fair for Kilgy, it's probably fair for DeAndre to give him some preseason games to ramp up into it instead of just throwing them in the mix because you want to have growth and you want to feel like the strides that he's making are real positive."