SANTA CLARA \u2014 George Kittle and Fred Warner, the 49ers\u2019 most celebrated captains, are both rehabilitating ankle injuries with their availabilities very much uncertain.<\/p>\n
For Kittle, he\u2019s battling a short recovery timeline to play Sunday night when the 49ers (11-4) host the Chicago Bears (11-4).<\/p>\n
For Warner, he\u2019s two months into an encouraging comeback from ankle surgery and is making the 49ers \u201cre-examine\u201d his potential for a late-playoff return.<\/p>\n
General manager John Lynch updated each player\u2019s health in his weekly segment Friday morning on KNBR. Here are Lynch\u2019s comments:<\/p>\n
On Fred Warner\u2019s potential return for NFC Championship Game or Super Bowl:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really focused on the Bears right now. That\u2019s because we need to continue to improve as a team and sharpen our edge as we get into these playoffs. Right now we\u2019re playing for seeding, to try and make the path a little bit more favorable for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I can tell you is Fred has been working incredibly hard. He\u2019s been attacking it every which way and he\u2019s making really good progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve said this consistently: It would be well ahead of the original timeline that we were given but Fred has the ability to move the doctors, because they\u2019re going to put objective measurements out there that, \u2018If you can reach these, you can get there.\u2019 And Fred has continually done that. It\u2019s made a lot of people kind of re-examine, \u2018OK, would this be possible?\u2019 I think that\u2019s a great thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m watching him. I\u2019ve consistently said I won\u2019t put anything past him and it\u2019s a thing that will remain to be seen. But I know he\u2019s putting his heart and soul and incredible work ethic to work every single day in an effort to do that.<\/p>\n
On George Kittle\u2019s health and evaluating the risk for playoffs:<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s always a part of the equation with all our players, particularly with a player like George who\u2019s so valuable to us.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course you want George out there, and of course this is a huge game against the Bears.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had it stacked up against him in that it was a Monday night game on the Eastern side of our country, so you\u2019re not flying back until 3:30 (a.m.). The clock is just shorter the amount of time you have to get back on the field. The things we have going for us is it wasn\u2019t the dreaded high ankle sprain; it was the low ankle sprain.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorge is recovering really well. Is he going to get there? We don\u2019t know. It\u2019s one of those things he\u2019ll take it right up (to kickoff). George is the type of player where you give him that latitude where, \u2018We\u2019ll give you all the way up to the game.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other thing we feel real good about is we\u2019re well equipped in the event we don\u2019t have George. Will we be the same team? No, we\u2019re different without George there. But Luke Farrell is a really good football player. We\u2019ve seen what Jake Tonges can do when George is out. Brayden Willis would then be up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see where this thing goes. But George is doing everything he can, just like Fred, to try to be out there for this Bears game. That is one that will go right down to Sunday evening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach Kyle Shanahan will address the media late in the afternoon with an official injury report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA CLARA \u2014 George Kittle and Fred Warner, the 49ers\u2019 most celebrated captains, are both rehabilitating ankle injuries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,7,592,6066,2810,6,1161,252,2624,2623],"class_list":{"0":"post-630669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-49ers","8":"tag-49ers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-fred-warner","11":"tag-george-kittle","12":"tag-john-lynch","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-san-francisco","15":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","16":"tag-sanfrancisco","17":"tag-sanfrancisco49ers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115787441390272098","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}