Deebo Samuel and George Kittle will Play against Eagles, Jimmy Garoppolo will not

The 49ers just got some good news and some bad news.

The 49ers just got some good news and some bad news.

Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo will miss Sunday’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles. That’s not the good news. This is: Wide receiver Deebo Samuel and tight end George Kittle will play.

Garoppolo missed all three days of practice this week with a high-ankle sprain. “This game is just as important as Week 16,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said Friday, “so it has more to do with can they protect themselves? Are they risking long-term injury? We’ve got to be smart with the guys. If Jimmy could have played this week, he’d be out there.”

In addition to Garoppolo, the following 49ers will not play against the Eagles:

Running back Raheem Mostert (knee)

Linebacker Dre Greenlaw (thigh)

Cornerback Emmanuel Moseley (concussion)

Tight end Jordan Reed (knee)

Cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon (hamstring)

Defensive end Dee Ford (back)

And nickelback K’Waun Williams is questionable with a hip injury.

Samuel missed the first three games with a Jones fracture in his foot he suffered during June. But he practiced all three days this week. “We definitely have to be smart with him,” Shanahan said. “You see a lot of these injuries around the league, it’s what happens when you don’t go through a totally normal process of an offseason like we did. I know he’ll be out there, but it won’t be his normal role, that’s for sure.”

Conversely, it sounds like Kittle should start and get his typical workload. “We were close (to getting him back) last week,” Shanahan said.

So that’s good news. But it doesn’t sound like the 49ers will get good news about Dee Ford any time soon. They intend to place him on Injured Reserve on Saturday. Are the 49ers concerned he might retire?

“When you’re dealing with a back, everything is a concern,” Shanahan explained. “And that stuff does loosen up randomly, too. So that’s why we’re playing it slow. I just saw him in the hallway on my way here. I think he’s doing better than he was a couple weeks ago, that’s for sure. Just something we have to be smart with. Can’t risk things when you’re dealing with that part of the body. That’s why we’re being cautious.”


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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.