The Top 5 Running Backs on the 49ers Are Injured

JaMycal Hasty has a high ankle sprain and will miss a few games, Elijah Mitchell has a shoulder injury and is day to day, and Trey Sermon has a concussion and could miss time as well.

After two games, the 49ers are down to one healthy running back.

First, Jeff Wilson Jr. tore his meniscus during OTAs. Then Raheem Mostert injured his knee on his second carry of Week 1 and had season-ending surgery. And now, JaMycal Hasty has a high ankle sprain and will miss a few games, Elijah Mitchell has a shoulder injury and is day to day and Trey Sermon has a concussion and could miss time as well.

That means the 49ers' top five running backs are injured, and we still haven't reached October.

The only healthy running back remaining on the roster is Trenton Cannon, who signed with the team last week to return kickoffs. So today, the 49ers worked out three veteran free agent running backs, according to Kyle Shanahan: T.J. Yeldon, Duke Johnson and Lamar Miller. The 49ers could sign one or them, or promote Kerryon Johnson from the practice squad. The 49ers signed Johnson six days ago.

Mitchell, Hasty and Sermon all suffered injuries in the fourth quarter Sunday in the 49ers 17-11 win over the Eagles. The 49ers defense was dominant throughout the game, as it limited Philadelphia to just three points until late. But the 49ers offense couldn't put the game away. It let the Eagles hang around, and they fought hard until the end, and the 49ers running backs paid the price.

Perhaps if the 49ers had gotten the ball to Brandon Aiyuk more frequently, or used Trey Lance to shake things up, maybe they would have scored more than 17 points, and the Eagles would have let down in the third quarter when they realized they couldn't win.

Now, the 49ers have to patch together their running back room for a difficult three-game stretch against the Packers, the Seahawks and the Cardinals. And then the 49ers will get their bye week. This will be a critical stretch in the season.


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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.