San Francisco 49ers: Injuries overshadow bounce-back victory

The San Francisco 49ers earned a bounce-back victory in Week 2 but at a steep injury cost.

The reigning NFC Champion San Francisco 49ers headed to East Rutherford to face the Jets in Week 2 already reeling in a number of ways. Not only were they defeated by Arizona in the season-opener but they were without the likes of Deebo Samuel and Richard Sherman due to injuries. Yet, they still needed to pick up the win to stay in early contention in the NFC title hunt.

Against a lowly New York team, the Niners got the job done in terms of getting the victory and moving to 1-1. Unfortunately for San Francisco, the cost of that win might be more detrimental to them than dropping to 0-2 would’ve been.

Throughout the 31-13 win, the 49ers saw defensive end Nick Bosa, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, running back Raheem Mostert and defensive lineman Solomon Thomas all leave with injuries. Even worse, all of the injuries appear to not be just one-week things.

According to CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora, Mostert is believed to have an MCL injury that could cause him to miss time. Moreover, La Canfora also reported that 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said that the team fears Bosa has a torn ACL, that Thomas may have something similar and that Garoppolo will miss some time with a high-ankle sprain.

In case you didn’t realize, none of this is good for the 49ers and their plight in the 2020 NFL season.

Injuries could already sink the San Francisco 49ers’ chances of repeating in NFC.

Many people have talked about whether or not Garoppolo is an above-average quarterback or not but, one thing that’s certain is that he’s better than Nick Mullens, the signal-caller who led San Francisco to the second-worst record in the league in 2018, a finish that landed them Bosa in the draft at No. 2 overall.

Moreover, if the 49ers were going to win without their starting quarterback, they would need their full stable of running backs and their top-tier defense to be as good or better than they were last season. With Mostert missing time and the Bosa-Thomas duo possibly done for the year, that’s no longer in the cards for this team either.

Despite how good the San Francisco 49ers were last season, there was room for regression this year, regardless of injuries. We saw that in Week 1 when the team dropped a shocker to the Cardinals. And though they beat the Jets, New York might be the worst team in the league this year, so it’s only going to get tougher from here.

We’ll have to wait on the official word with these injuries but, as of now, things look a bit dire for the 49ers. Every team is banged up already but few have suffered this number of injuries to critical players. As such, another trip to the NFC Championship Game — or maybe even the playoffs at all — is now suddenly in jeopardy.