Deebo Samuel Injures Ankle Against Buccaneers

The 49ers were winning 21-0 when Samuel injured his ankle.

Grant Cohn | Dec 11, 2022

In this story:

San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers may have dodged a bullet.

Deebo Samuel left Sunday's game with an ankle injury, but initial reports indicate the injury isn't serious, which suggests he should return at some point this season.

When Samuel went down, the injury looked extremely serious, because he grabbed his left knee. Then he stayed down for a few minutes, got up, tried to walk off the field on his own but couldn't, so he dropped to the ground again and a cart wheeled him out while he covered his face with his hands. He looked like he thought the injury was serious, and so did his teammates who knelt around him quietly as he lay on the ground.

The 49ers were winning 21-0 when Samuel injured his ankle. He lined up in the backfield and received a handoff like a running back, which is normal for him -- he plays wide receiver AND running back. Plus he scored a rushing touchdown in the first quarter. But the carry that led to the ankle injury occurred near midfield while the 49ers held a three touchdown lead -- it was unnecessarily risky with very little reward. It would have been smarter to hand the ball off to Jordan Mason, the undrafted rookie running back who is heavier than 220 pounds and built to take a beating.

Kyle Shanahan has a bad habit of running non running backs between the tackles -- he did the same thing with Trey Lance, and he broke his ankle.

When will Shanahan learn?

Published Dec 11, 2022

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.