After the San Francisco 49ers cut down their roster from 90 players to 53 by the league’s 4 p.m. ET deadline on Tuesday, they had two quarterbacks on their active roster (Brock Purdy and Mac Jones) and two on season-ending injured reserve (Tanner Mordecai and Carter Bradley). However, they also had Kurtis Rourke, who they moved to the reserve/NFI list.

Rourke started his collegiate career at Ohio from 2019-23, earning All-MAC honors twice and MAC MVP once before transferring to Indiana for his final year. In 48 career games between the two schools, he completed 67% of his passes for 10,693 yards, 79 touchdowns and 21 interceptions. He also ran for an additional 793 yards and 13 scores.

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The 24-year-old played his entire 2024 campaign with Indiana on a torn ACL and had surgery this offseason to repair the injury, which forced him to fall in the draft, with the 49ers taking him in the seventh round (No. 227 overall). While recovering from the injury, Rourke has been away from the practice field, and he was placed on active/NFI at the start of training camp, so no one has had a chance to see him operate the offense at all.

During a media availability earlier this week alongside general manager John Lynch, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was asked whether this year was going to be a redshirt year for Rourke or whether he has a chance to return and earn a spot on the roster.

“He gets three weeks to decide when he comes back, so we’ll decide on that and how those three weeks go,” Shanahan said. “I don’t expect it anytime real soon, but I think what I said last time around Week 6 or something. So, sometime in that area. When that happens, we’ll have three weeks to decide. It’s always tough when a guy doesn’t get any offseason to throw him into three weeks of carded practices and stuff to make a decision. He’s worked as hard as anyone can in the position he’s in, just when we see him out in the morning doing what he does in the morning, how attentive he is in the meetings. So, he’ll give himself a chance in those three weeks, and if not, he’ll get a redshirt year.”

Now on the reserve/NFI list, Rourke can’t practice or play in games for the first six weeks of the season. He could return to practice then, but he can’t be activated until San Francisco has played at least eight games. Once Rourke does start practicing, he has a three-week window to be activated, and if the 49ers don’t activate him, he’ll be forced to miss his entire rookie season.

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The 49ers did sign former UFL MVP Adrian Martinez to their practice squad to give them more depth at quarterback, but Rourke could be a better project for San Francisco to work with in 2025. However, if Brock Purdy and Mac Jones are both healthy when Rourke could return, the 49ers may not be willing to waste a roster spot that could be more useful at another position on a quarterback that they hope won’t see the field this year.

Only time will tell.

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This article originally appeared on Niners Wire: 49ers injury update on QB Kurtis Rourke from HC Kyle Shanahan