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49ers DE Nick Bosa Is Questionable for Sunday with a Hip Injury

The 49ers might not have their best pass rusher Sunday when they face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Grant Cohn

Oct 20, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa (97) looks up at the ball while being blocked by Kansas City Chiefs offensive tackle Jawaan Taylor (74) in the first quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images
Oct 20, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa (97) looks up at the ball while being blocked by Kansas City Chiefs offensive tackle Jawaan Taylor (74) in the first quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images / Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images
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The 49ers might not have their best pass rusher Sunday when they face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Nick Bosa is listed as questionable with a hip pointer he suffered Wednesday during practice. Then he was "extremely limited" all week according to head coach Kyle Shanahan. On Tuesday, Bosa did individual position drills for roughly 15 minutes then walked off the field and disappeared into the weight room presumably because his hip bothered him.

Which means Bosa may not be healthy enough to play this weekend. Or if he can play, he might not be healthy enough to carry his usual workload or even make it through the entire game.

Through the first half of the season, the 49ers' pass rush has been extremely Bosa-dependent. He currently has 25 pressures while no one else on the team has more than 12. So if he doesn't play against Tampa Bay, Baker Mayfield could have all the time in the world to pick the 49ers defense apart.

Even if Bosa plays, the 49ers will need to be creative to generate a pass rush against an excellent Buccaneers offensive line. Defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen will have to scheme up pressure from unexpected places. Have we seen him blitz a nickelback or a corner yet? Robert Saleh used to do that every game when he was the 49ers defensive coordinator.

One way or another, the 49ers pass rush can't depend solely on one player. Other people need to step up.

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Grant Cohn
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.

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