Charvarius Ward is Glad the 49ers Cancelled Joint Practices with the Saints

The 49ers originally planned to go to Irvine this week to practice for two days against the New Orleans Saints.

Grant Cohn | Aug 14, 2024

Feb 5, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers cornerback Charvarius Ward (7) talks to the media during Super Bowl LVIII Opening Night at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Lucas Peltier-USA TODAY Sports / Lucas Peltier-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

SANTA CLARA -- The 49ers originally planned to go to Irvine this week to practice for two days against the New Orleans Saints.

Recently, the 49ers had to cancel the trip because they're too injured. Head coach Kyle Shanahan was extremely disappointed. On Wednesday, cornerback Charvarius Ward was asked how he feels.

Q: Were you at all disappointed that the joint practices were canceled?

WARD: "No."

ME: Why?

WARD: "I just want to stay in my comfort zone and focus on ourselves and get better and compete against each other. I think we would have gotten the same amount of good work down there as we will up here. And I just like being home."

Q: Will you guys try to make these next two practices as intense as possible to match what the joint practices would have been like intensity-wise?

WARD: "I feel like we have some of the most intense practices in the NFL. I've been on a couple teams. Obviously Kansas City practices really hard, but I feel like we match that intensity that they practice at. We're always going to push ourselves every day in practice to get better and better. Practicing against ourselves is what's best for us in my opinion."

Q: Does that explain all the injuries that have occurred in training camp so far?

WARD: "I don't what's the reason behind that. It might just be bad luck. But obviously the goal is to have everybody healthy for Week 1 of the regular season."

Published Aug 14, 2024

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.