Elijah Mitchell is Doubtful to Play Against the Packers

The 49ers starting running back most likely will be rookie Trey Sermon, who was a healthy scratch Week 1.

Grant Cohn | Sep 24, 2021

SANTA CLARA -- The 49ers' running back rotation is starting to take shape.

Rookie Elijah Mitchell, who started Week 2 against the Philadelphia Eagles, is doubtful to play Sunday night against the Green Bay Packers. Which means he almost certainly will be out. And JaMycal Hasty and Raheem Mostert are out, too.

So the 49ers starting running back most likely will be rookie Trey Sermon, who was a healthy scratch Week 1, then got concussed on his first career carry Week 2. But he's out of the concussion protocol.

The 49ers also have Jacques Patrick and Trenton Cannon on their 53-man roster, as well as Kerryon Johnson and Chris Thompson on their practice squad.

Here's what head coach Kyle Shanahan said about his running backs on Friday.

Q: How has Sermon looked in practice?

SHANAHAN: "With the rules, he can't do everything, but he has been great all week with what he has been allowed to do in individual and getting to do everything today. You're never fully sure until they get cleared, but he has been great all week."

Q: How did Jacques Patrick look this week?

SHANAHAN: "He did a good job. There was a lot thrown out him in three practices. He tried to absorb as much as he can and be ready to go if need be."

Q: How do you handle a situation like this?

SHANAHAN: "You have to do a lot of stuff. You can't take everything in, so you try compartmentalize things and put them into certain groups and try to teach them a few groups. You also can't go around the clock as much as you need to know, because there's a lot of work you have to recover from."

Check out the full interview below.

Published Sep 24, 2021

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.