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49ers HC Kyle Shanahan Says there's No Timeline for Dre Greenlaw's Return

Unfortunately for the 49ers, they need Greenlaw back desperately.

Grant Cohn

Feb 6, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw (57) during a press conference before Super Bowl LVIII at the Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Feb 6, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Dre Greenlaw (57) during a press conference before Super Bowl LVIII at the Hilton Lake Las Vegas Resort. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
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It doesn't seem like Dre Greenlaw will return to the field any time soon.

Greenlaw ruptured his Achilles during the Super Bowl in February. A few months ago, head coach Kyle Shanahan said he expected Greenlaw to be ready to play by midseason. Well, Week 4 is upon us, which means midseason is about a month away.

On Monday, Shanahan was asked if there's a timeline for when Greenlaw approximately will come back.

"No," Shanahan said. "When I said out at the beginning of the year, I was hoping mid-season. I haven't asked here in the last couple weeks, but that was what it was at the beginning of the year and still hoping that. But mid-season is still a ways away."

Shanahan makes a key distinction between expecting and hoping. Hoping someone comes back by midseason doesn't mean he will come back by then. I hope I'm going to win the lottery but I don't expect to win it. Big difference.

It sounds like the 49ers are being extremely conservative with Greenlaw's rehabilitation process, which is smart because a ruptured Achilles can ruin a player's career. There's no guarantee that Greenlaw will bounce back to being the player he was before this injury. It's possible he won't be good anymore when he returns. So rushing him back to the field would be a mistake.

Unfortunately for the 49ers, they need Greenlaw back desperately. They can't stop the run without him, nor can they cover tight ends. Their defense is in shambles and it doesn't seem like Greenlaw can save them.

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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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