Injuries. The San Francisco 49ers Week 7 loss to the Los Angeles Rams was brought to you by the letter ‘I’ for “injuries.” One injury that seems to be recurring every week is Matt Breida going down. Multiple times. He went down on the first play Sunday, stopping the game and limped off the field later on in the first half.
It’s not a good situation. Especially when the 49ers are already short a starting running back in Jerick McKinnon.
Each week, Breida becomes a questionable, maybe a game time decision, and each week he’s found suiting up, trying to shoulder the 49ers running game in place of McKinnon. Every time he goes down, it looks like it may be his last play for awhile.
On Sunday, the 49ers saw enough in the first half and pulled Breida for the game. He had his helmet and was ready to go, but the 49ers weren’t having any of it. In his press conference Sunday after the Rams loss, Shanahan commented on Breida’s current rolled ankle suffered on Sunday — in what has been a recurring injury.
“That’s something we’ll have to look into hard. It’s based off how he looks in practice. Breida’s done a very good job recovering throughout the week. He’s had very good practices making all the cuts and everything on Fridays and Saturdays. Obviously, that first play today, it went. When that happens on the first play, we want to see the film and see what happened. He was begging to come back in the game the second half and felt like he was good enough too, but getting at what you’re talking about, that’s why we made that decision to keep him down. Hopefully he’ll heal up more this week. We’ll have to reassess it again.”
Breida discussed the injury, saying that he wants to play even when hurt. The loss of McKinnon has made him put more pressure on himself, but he’s realizing that it might be might be doing more damage than good.
“I tried to keep on playing. I have to be smart and not hurt my team at the same time. If I can’t go out there and go 100-percent, I have to let the guys that can do it.”
Don’t be surprised if the 49ers make a judgment call on Breida for the Arizona Cardinals and shut him down for Sunday’s game. Maybe longer than that. He’s too important to lose for the entire season.