49ers REACTION: Brock Purdy good news, Rams return theory | Ricky Pearsall update | Roster moves

49ers REACTION: Brock Purdy good news, Rams return theory | Ricky Pearsall update | Roster moves

Load it 49ers update. Why don’t we start with Brock Birdie who’s out on that practice field moving well. I can report that he is more involved in practice than he was at this point last week. So things trending in the right direction with Brock Birdie, but now everybody’s asking me when is he going to return? Because it certainly seems based on practice that M. Jones is again in line to start for the 49ers on Sunday against the Texans. Well, for that I present to you the Rams return theory. Obviously, the 49ers are going to want their QB1 back in time to play the Rams right here at Levi Stadium. That’s November 9th on natural grass, which is safer than artificial turf. The next two games for the 49ers at Houston and then against the New York Giants at Metife, aka Met Death Stadium, which wiped out the entire 49ers team back in 2020. Those next two games are on artificial turf. So the question I think is going to come down to do the 49ers want to get Brock Perie out there to knock off any potential rust before the Rams return on November 9th or do they think it’s not worth it to put him out there on artificial turf considering the fact that this is a tow injury and that could be sensitive to that and will they just run him out there on November 9th against the Rams assuming that his recovery continues in a good linear way. But right now it’s going well. He he’s moving well. The the Kyle Shanahan today confirmed that things are trending in the right direction. We’ve seen him become a more involved participant at practice. I think it’s going to end up being a rust versus turf exposure question for the 49ers. Either way, M. Jones is in his best physical state in in quite a while. I talked to him after the game in the locker room. And the 49ers have the luxury at 5 and two of continuing to slow play this for Brock Birdie. Remember, they need this offense to be elite down the stretch, run, heading into the playoffs. Five wins. They may be over halfway to to playoff qualification at this point. They have earned themselves the luxury of slow playing situations like this to make sure that they satisfy a couple criteria. A, you want Pertie to return, but B, you want him to return and then not have to yank him again. That is the long-term key for the 49ers and it may be one that ultimately determines how far they make it in this 2025 season. All right, injury list for the 49ers at practice today. No Ricky Pierol and why don’t we just have Kyle Shanahan take the rest of it away. Demo has a quad will not practice. Bryce Hub hamstring no practice. Brendle hamstring no practice. U hamstring no practice. Ricky knee no practice. Trenton and Christian both bad days. Um, Perie toe limited, Berford knee limited, Bernardo Green toe limited, South Ankle Limited. 49ers made a roster move that is interesting from the Tetris perspective that I can explain because it seems that there’s a lot of confusion as to why they did it. Travis Gibson, the veteran edge rusher, was released and then resigned to the practice squad. So, he never left the locker room. Robert Beal Jr., meanwhile, fellow edge rusher, was promoted from the practice squad to the 53man roster. So Gibson spent just a few days on the 53. He had been on the practice squad previously. Why was that? Well, because the 49ers, they only have a max of two practice squad elevations per week. And they needed to use one on Malik Turner, the wide receiver number 81, who was playing some good special teams for San Francisco. And they needed to use another one on Nick Zakel, who actually replaced Connor Colby for four snaps at left guard in this past game. But since they were short on defensive ends, they still had to get Travis Gibson out there. So, they just promoted him to the 53man roster because it didn’t cost them a practice squad elevation to play him in that scenario. Now, they’ve moved Gibson back to the practice squad because they’ve actually only used two of his max three elevations to the game day roster on the season. So, they could still elevate Travis Gibson. I would expect them to do that uh one more time coming up here on Sunday against the Texans. Barring another roster move, they can use that third elevation and they could figure out what’s going to happen beyond then it is a weekby- week thing. 49ers are just trying to survive. We could even say day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute at that edge rusher position. Today at practice, we saw Bryce Huff working off on the side. Huff is not going to play with the hamstring injury in this game against the Texans. So the 49ers are down to Mike Williams, Sam Okawanu, Travis Gibson, William Bradley King at that edge rusher position. U Gross Matoss also didn’t practice today. We’ll see if he he might return this week, but I wouldn’t count on it even if does come back. He had been on a pitch count due to the knee injury prior to the hamstring injury. So, there’s a reason why we’re talking about trades and uh all these potential moves the 49ers can make to spruce up the edge rusher position because they are really really hurting there right now. All right, back to the offensive line move because George KD called out Connor Colby after the 49ers played the Atlanta Falcons and that I expect to see him at our body maintenance on Mondays and Tuesdays because he does not know how to take care of his body yet as a professional athlete. So, some tough love there. Iowa guy to fellow Iowa guy. But it turns out that during the game, Matt Barrows was able to confirm this. I had mentioned in some of my previous videos that Nick Zakel replaced Connor Colby for four snaps. And we were not too sure why. The reason that Zel’s insertion into the lineup in place of Conor KBY was temporary was just because Jake Brendle got hurt at center. when Brendle got hurt and Matt Hennessy came in, Zakel was the 49ers last remaining potential center. He’s trained to play that very very important position. So the 49ers could not risk keeping Zakel in the game in case both he and Hennessy got hurt because if they that would have happened then they wouldn’t have had a center and it could have led to absolute catastrophe. Remember center’s in charge of a lot of important communication up front to help the quarterback position and make the offense work. So they weren’t happy with how KBY started that game against the Falcons. They replaced him, but then Brendle got hurt forcing Matt Hennessy into the game and then Colby came back in. Leads us to the next question. Is Nick Secel going to start in place of Conor Colby on Sunday at Houston? And I think the same dynamic may still be at play for the 49ers. They won’t want to expose their centers to injury. But you’ve got other guys on the roster like Drake Nent, maybe even Drew Moss, but probably Nent is the more likely candidate who might be able to to fill in and play an emergency center. Nent would have to be elevated off the practice squad, though, and the 49ers only have two of those slots per week. And with some of the injuries that they have, that can be something very, very difficult to do. So, uh, just really interesting that the so much that happened for the 49ers up front in the run game on Sunday was a mark of an evolution. I’ve did a whole video earlier this morning from the Palace of Fine Arts, which is probably a more pristine background than this one. But the helmet is beautiful as well. It’s an iconic San Francisco helmet. But I talked about the fact the 49ers ran their most power runs in the entire Kyle Shanahan tenure. They average 7.1 yards per carry on power. a whole heck of a lot of gap scheme for the 49ers. And they also did make a change up front, although it was a short-lived one. And then they made the longer term change up front after Jake Brendle went down. Matt Hennessy 16 lbs heavier than Brendle, I think, uh was the fit the the the 49ers attack on that power scheme much much more robustly than Jake Brendle, who’s more of a finesse movement type of center. I talked to several of the offensive linemen in the 49ers building today and those guys love running power and it’s it’s like a change up, right? A pitcher who only throws a fast ball is going to get timed up. But if you can mix in something else, as the 49ers did with all the gap scheme stuff up the middle against the Falcons, people can’t key in on the outside zone. Dominic Pun especially said that that was one of the most fun games that he had ever played. He had run a ton of wide zone stuff in college at Kansas. Dominic Pony got to run some real power for the 49ers. You know, I talked to Christian McAffrey as well and and Christian, it reminded him of his Stanford days where the 49ers ran a whole heck of a lot of power. Christian also spoke of Fred Warner and and the presence of the future Hall of Fame linebacker, how it affected and impacted the 49ers in a positive way on Sunday. A lot, man. You know, he’s he’s the leader of this team. uh he means so much to this organization and uh just his presence is felt you know I think it’s it’s motivating for all of us uh you know when we see him out there and when he’s around it you know gives us a lot of juice speaking of Warner his replacement Tatum Bthun wore the green dot on his helmet during the game against the Falcons he talked about his bond with the 49ers weak side linebacker D Winters but it’s also with the rest of the defense too especially D Winters man we We hit it off pretty well. We all like brothers, man. It kind of remind me of college. So, you know, whenever we get a chance to spend time with each other, it obviously shows on the field, too. Now, I find that comment really interesting because one thing that Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch have done so well over their time here in charge of the 49ers is building a a locker room that is very, very open and sociable. And it does remind you of a college locker room. I I’ll say this. I covered the Raiders for a few practices back when I worked for the Athletic in 2018 and they were still in Oakland. You went into that locker room and it gave much more of a mercenary vibe. Not a lot of guys talking, just, you know, guys there to collect the paycheck, move in, move out. That has never been the case under Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch with these 49ers. And that’s something that I think they’ve emphasized because in a league where the margins are excessively tight at this point. You I mean you’ve seen it this year. The 49ers only have a plus seven point differential but they’re five and two. How do you find a way to make sure that you deliver in the crucial junctures? How do you find a way to outperform those margins because everything is decided by such a tiny minuscule amount? Well, you got to find every single edge you can. And if you could have guys that like each other in the locker room, that communicate better, that will strain together just that extra little bit when push comes to shove, you’ve got a better chance of performing when all the chips are down. And I think that some of the 49ers work on making sure that locker room has been as cohesive as possible has really shown through in this 2025 season. You know, San Francisco, you talk about the run game. This was really interesting. Kristen Yuschek posted a little clip on Facebook from before the game on Sunday. Give us a speech. This week, um, it’s going to be the best game that we’ve had all season running the football. Hell yeah. Because, well, Kyle Yusek knew that the 49ers were going to have some success running the football. And yeah, I we talked about it on this show as well. Falcons didn’t have a great run defense. They were a little bit light, but what I didn’t know is that the 49ers were going to run as much power, as much inside stuff, but they truly took advantage of that lighter, very aggressive, blitzing Atlanta defense. And and they offered the counter, they offered the change up that uh we previously hadn’t seen in that amount from Kyle Shanahan. Colton Mikovich today in the locker room was was very excited about the fact that the 49ers have shown the ability to run both, the outside zone and the power. But make no mistake, the outside zone remember remains the 49ers bread and butter under Kyle Shanahan. So what’s going to happen against the Texans this week? Because you go from a Falcons defense that was good, that could cover, that was extremely aggressive blitz-wise to a Texans defense led by Demo Ryan that doesn’t blitz nearly as much, but is the number one unit in all of football. Good thing that M. Jones has got some of his mobility back as he’s gotten a little bit healthier here over the past couple weeks. It’s a good thing the 49ers now are threatening in multiple aspects of the run game because they’re going to need it against the Houston Texans defense that is awesome in pass defense and in coverage. They’ve got Will Anderson Jr., Denil Hunter, the linebacker level. They’ve got Aziz Alshshire on the back end. They’ve got Kamari Lacier and Derek Stingley. There’s a lot of a lot of good players on this Texans defense. They gave Seattle and Sam Darnold quite a bit of trouble. It was the Houston offense that really, really screwed things up. The one weakness for Houston is the run defense. Number 18 in the league. It’s a midling run defense, and the 49ers will try to again try to control game flow via the run in this one against Houston. We will see if they are successful. It’s going to be much harder though for the offense than it was last week against Atlanta just given the caliber of this Houston defense on the back end. Of course, I think that the the flip side, CJ Strad does not present as much of a challenge as Michael Penn Jr. and Bjan Robinson, but we can preview that a little bit more as this week progresses. Main things to remember now, the perie Rams theory and no Ricky Pierce at practice for the 49ers today. We’ll see how that progresses. Oh, one more piece of news as I cover absolutely everything here. Spencer Burford’s practice window has been opened. Knee injury. He’s on injured reserve. He was back out at practice today. Thought Spencer looked like he was moving well. He has started at guard for the 49ers in the past, but most recently they’ve had him in at tackle. I think they prefer him at tackle. I think Spencer prefers playing tackle that is college position. But if he’s needed along the interior, which has been the weak part of the 49ers offensive line, they’ve had trouble along the interior, not at the tackle positions, maybe Spencer Berford can help there. All right, there’s today’s full report. We’ll talk to you soon. Probably not. I mean, he hasn’t missed one yet except for his first extra point. Um, so I’ll count that. Um, so he said I hit every field goal except for one extra point. So, um, that definitely gives me a lot of confidence. I mean, my confidence is always based off my life experiences with someone, and my life experience has been pretty damn good with him so far. So, um, he’s doing a hell of a job.

49ers REACTION: Brock Purdy good news, Rams return theory | Ricky Pearsall update | Roster moves

Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkDZB2Cy0KiJmvoC-PTfM2A/join

David Lombardi covers the 49ers for The SF Standard.

Become an SF Standard Member to read David’s articles here: https://sfstandard.com/author/david-lombardi/

* X: @LombardiHimself
* Instagram: @lombardihimself

* Subscribe!
* Leave a comment.

#49ers #BrockPurdy #BrandonAiyuk #GeorgeKittle #KyleShanahan #NickBosa #FredWarner #DreGreenlaw #TrentWilliams #SanFrancisco #Sandwiches