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Deebo Samuel Rehabs his Shoulder at 49ers Practice

If he can't practice at all today, how can he play a football game in a few days?

Grant Cohn

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SANTA CLARA -- Deebo Samuel missed Wednesday's practice with a shoulder injury, which seems like bad news considering the NFC Championship is just a few days away.

But he didn't fracture his shoulder -- head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Wednesday that Samuel merely hurt it, whatever that means. His shoulder hurts. That's all we know according to the head coach.

Samuel was the only player on the 49ers who didn't practice at all on Wednesday, which also seems like bad news. If he can't practice at all today, how can he play a football game in a few days?

But if you were watching him practice and you didn't know he injured his left shoulder Saturday against the Packers, you'd never know he was injured. He didn't wear a sling or favor his left shoulder or arm in any way. He did sprints up and down the field, and as he ran he carried a football in his left hand. He looked healthy to me.

Clearly Samuel isn't healthy and if he plays in the NFC Championship, he almost certainly won't be 100 percent. But after watching him run around the practice field today, I believe he'll suit up and play at least part of the game. No idea how effective he'll be or if he'll make it through the entire game, but he looks too healthy to sit out of an NFC Championship.

Even if Samuel is far below 100 percent, he still can be on the field and go in motion and cause anxiety for the Lions defense.

I expect Samuel to play.

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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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