49ers Activate Arik Armstead off the Reserve/COVID-19 List

In a sense, the 49ers got healthier over the bye week.

Grant Cohn | Nov 25, 2020

In a sense, the 49ers got healthier over the bye week.

The 49ers activated Arik Armstead and Hroniss Grasu from the Reserve/COVID-19 on Wednesday. That's good news.

Plus, Raheem Mostert, Deebo Samuel, Richard Sherman, Jeff Wilson Jr. and Tevin Coleman all should return from injury and play Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams. So that’s seven players the 49ers potentially will get back. More good news.

But as players come back, more go on the Reserve/COVID-19 List. The following players currently are on it: Brandon Aiyuk, Daniel Helm, D.J. Jones, Javon Kinlaw, Joe Walker, Trent Williams and Jordan Willis. That’s one starting wide receiver, two starting defensive tackles and the starting left tackle. Seven players in all. Not good news.

Head coach Kyle Shanahan said Wednesday that he hopes some of the players on the Reserve/COVID-19 list will play against the Rams, but doesn’t necessarily expect any of them to return by then.

Yikes.

“I’m really hoping we’ll get Deebo and Raheem back and Jeff Wilson and Sherm this week,” Shanahan said, “but they haven’t played in a while, so we have to be smart with them. The guys who have been playing, they’ve got a lot of rest this past week so hopefully their bodies are fresher. But we do have a different issue this week with seven players being down the Covid list, so we have to be smart. We’ll see if we have a chance to get them back at the end of the week, but we’re not guaranteed of that. So we have to be smart with the practice squad guys that we use today for practice squad and for normal reps because if those guys don’t come back, those guys are going to be the guys playing in the game.”

Double yikes.

Published Nov 25, 2020

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.