Dee Ford Says the 49ers Will Put Him on a Pitch Count for Week 1

Here's what Ford said Monday about the 49ers' plans for his playing time.

Grant Cohn | Sep 6, 2021

SANTA CLARA -- Dee Ford finally feels 100 percent healthy for the first time on the 49ers.

But he's not ready to play full time yet.

According to Ford, this Sunday the 49ers will keep him on a "pitch count, which means he will play only part time.

Here's what Ford said Monday about the 49ers' plans for his playing time.

FORD: "Like any injury, I'm going to start on a pitch count. That's standard. My role is to do what they brought me here to do -- make big plays."

Q: How do you feel right now?

FORD: "I feel good. Progressing every day. We're not really trying to reinvent the wheel and throw too much volume at one time. Everything has been pretty good."

Q: How do you know when you're back to feeling like yourself?

FORD: "That's a good question. We have these monitors in our shoulder pads that track the speeds we go. That's a good measurement. You want to stay at a steady speed. And then tape. Tape is a good indication. How you're practicing. How you're feeling. I've never really felt out of rhythm coming back, because I stayed here most of the offseason. I worked my hands every day. There was nothing I really needed to do to get back to being consistent."

Q: Kyle Shanahan said you were injured before Week 1 last season. Were you hoping to muscle through the year?

FORD: "Yeah. Ironically, that happened last time I hurt my back. I tried to tough it out. That's a negative, because you only make it worse. So I put myself in a bad situation instead of handling it. I tried to push through it, but spines don't work that way."

Q: What have you seen from Lions rookie right tackle Penei Sewell?

FORD: "He's good. He's a rookie, and for them, it's never really about what they can do. It's about adapting to situations you've never seen before. For him, everything is new. He's going to have to adapt and learn. That's standard rookie life."

Q: Are you saying the adjustments he makes during the game will determine you approach him?

FORD: "No. I see myself like an offensive player. I don't make adjustments. I do my thing."

Published Sep 6, 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.