Hello, and welcome to the forty nine Ers First and ten Podcast, ten minutes of the most up to date forty nine Ers news first thing in the morning. I'm your host, Brionna McDonald, and I'm joined by a forty nine Ers team reporter, Lindsay Polaris. The forty nine Ers are officially in their wild card bye week, but that
doesn't mean the work has stopped. We received some team updates from head coach Kyle Shanahan and his conference call yesterday, and he gave some insight on the team's practice schedule this week. So, lindsay, what's it going to be like to not have a game this weekend but still stay the course of training, working out and keeping their momentum.
Yeah, Brie, not so dissimilarly from what we saw in week eighteen. The forty nine Ers are NAVI getting this line of trying to get healthy, conserve energy, get ready for the playoffs, but still remain mentally sharp in football shape. And I do think that the practice schedule very much reflects that a Wednesday is going to be kind of like a free workout day. Guys will be in the building, but it's not going to be a formal practice from point.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan said, it's kind of like skill positions can go out and run.
Some individual drills on the field.
They'll be lifting, you know, light work Wednesday, and then full go practices on Thursday and Friday. He said that last week the forty nine ers had just one full go practice. They're trying to up that to two during the bye week, and then of course they're going to have the weekend off just because this is going to be really the last time to get a couple days off before what they hope is an extended playoff run.
At least one of the two full go workouts are going to be padded practices of what you expect from this wild card week for everyone else bye week for the forty nine ers.
The head coach shared that there's a fine line in resting and being ready and how the team is trying to stay sharp and continue improving. So here's what Kashanahan had to say about navigating the bye week.
We are in this time to sit and rest a little bit and try to get ourselves in the best position for next week. But resting doesn't always help you. I mean, you've got to be ready, and the way you get ready is you don't just sit around and wait for the moment. You got to work for that moment. So there's a very fine line and all that. We're trying to balance it out as a team. From my standpoint, just guys who can get healthy trying to help them
do that. I think we started that last week. Guys who can just get better, get smarter in certain areas, like if we can find any of those spots, that's what we're trying to really focus on. And everybody just says, an individual's got to make sure they kind of sharpen their sword and keep trying to get it to the best spot for really almost two weeks from now. And that's something that you know, yeah, I'll do it here and there, but it's there's no magical speech that just
truly motivates people. It's trying to make sense that people understand what they need to do to perform. And sometimes when I don't reach guys on in ways like that, hopefully there's a guy who works next to him who knows them in a different way who can reach him that way. And that's why we have lots of people in this building who are leaders and really try to help each other because it never can come from one person.
And this hard earned bye week is going to serve a lot of players well, especially those who are dealing with injuries. And it was quite a list of updates, twelve guys who are working through injuries coming out of the regular season. So, lindsay, could you break it down for us who are some players that we could see back out at practice this week and which guys are sitting out this week?
Yes, Brie, like you mentioned, the forty nine ers injury list is in double digits, but I don't want that to be a huge alarm to the forty nine ers faithful, just anyone interested in this team, because head coach Kyle Shanahan actually said he feels good about this injury list because the forty nine ers do have the luxury of
time with the bye week. They're not going to be playing on wild card weekend, and then they've still got a full week separating them from the divisional round game that's gonna happen at some point the weekend of January twentieth. So I think some notable updates. There's twelve names on this list, but running back Christian McCaffrey. He's gonna be sitting out for a second straight week with that calf strain, but they feel very confident that he'll be back at
practice next week. Ambry Thomas, who we heard had hand surgery last week, should be back at practice this week. He wasn't expected to miss significant time and it's kind of working out in that way. Defensive lineman Eric Armstead, who's been dealing with foot and knee injuries. He has not played since Week thirteen. He closed out that Eagles game and has not had playing time since. He's actually
expected to be back at practice this week. I think the plan, the working plan, is to have him practice on Thursday, see how it goes, and possibly have him in on Friday as well. Wide receiver Juwan Jennings, who spent some significant time in the league's concussion protocol, has cleared, so we should see him at practice as well. Defensive lineman Cleland Ferrell, who actually made an early exit to that regular season finale and was really the only significant
injury coming out of that Rams game. He is actually expected to miss a few weeks, but the hope is that he will return at some point in the playoffs, and I think the wording that Shanahan said was likely missed at least one game. Safety Taylor Hawkins, who made his NFL debut against the Rams, actually suffered a risk injury that he will need surgery on. And then we remember tight end George Kittle had some backspasm's pre game ended up not playing against the Rams.
He's doing much better. Drake Greenlaw also ended up being a scratch from that Rams game and the team is going to be smart with him during the bye. John Fulciano day to day to Sean Gibson Senior, he had a quad injury, was held out out of the regular season finale, going to be back at practice. And then safety George Odom who suffered a biceps tear earlier in
the season and was placed on injured reserve. He's going to have his twenty one day practice window opened this week, so also expect to see him back at workouts.
All right, quite a list, but it's looking bright. So thank you Lindsay for those updates. And yesterday's call was also the first time we heard from the head coach following Sunday's Rams game, So what was his evaluation on the team's backup and rotational players, and where is his confidence in this team's depths.
Yeah, I think specifically he was speaking to the defense, but more generally, he said he was happy that the rotational players, the newcomers to the team, the younger players, were really able to get those significant snap counts just in a live action game. There really is nothing that
can replace those reps. They're really good experience. He was also happy to see Sam Darnold get those very significant reps get the start because you never know what happens in the playoffs, and you know injuries they're unfortunate, but they do happen. As you can see by the current injury list for the forty nine ers, there has been a number of injuries at several key positions. So you want to make sure that your players are ready to go at a moment's notice, because you never know when
you're going to need that next man up. But that being said, he did mention that the forty nine ers at various position groups really do have a heavy rotation going. You can see that specifically on the defensive line at the nickelback position, players are rotating in and out in order to keep them fresh. Keep them ready as the
game is going on. So rotational players are getting those significant reps, but to have the large majority of them in that regular season finale, he was really happy that that was something they were able to do.
Now that the twenty twenty three regular season has come to a close, now is the time that the awards start rolling in and we have some exciting wins to announce. The NFL Players Association released its list for the second annual Players All Pro Team. And what's cool about this award is that it's voted on exclusively by active NFL players, and this honor is different from the AP All Pro list that is soon to come. But it looks like
four forty nine Ers players received NFLPA All Pro honors. Lindsay, would you like to share who made the team?
Yes, congratulations are in order for Trent Williams, Christian McCaffrey, Kyle Check, and Fred Warner. For Williams, Warner and you Sheck, this is actually their second time being voted onto the Players All Pro Team. And like you mentioned, Brie, this is a little bit different than when you see a Pro Bowl vote or just the AP All Pro Team because this is one hundred percent voted on by the players.
They're the only ones voicing their votes in this and they count for one hundred percent of the outcome, so it's a it's a very cool distinction to know that your colleagues across the league are the ones that voted you onto this list. So huge congratulations to those four forty nine ers players. And you know, like you mentioned, awards season is just ramping up, so we'll be very excited to see what else the forty nine Ers bring home.
Great, well, that will do it for this episode. Thank you so much, Lindsay for joining me in this update. Don't forget to follow First and ten on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Turn on the notifications so you're in the know when we post any breaking news updates. And thank you Faithful for tuning in.