The 49ers defensive line is already hanging together by a thread
· Yahoo Sports
It just wouldn't be a 49ers season without a concerning laundry list of injuries, and this Thursday's season opener in Australia appears to be no different.
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By all accounts, Keion White appears to be the lone defensive end without any injury concerns heading into San Francisco's international game against the Los Angeles Rams in Melbourne, at least on paper. This situation became official on Friday when the Niners ruled Sam Okuayinonu out for the Week 1 matchup with a foot injury.
Okuayinonu was healthy on Wednesday at the start of the team's practice. But later that evening, the 49ers announced he was not traveling with them, initially saying he was questionable for the Rams game before ruling him out on Friday. The team hasn't released any more details, but it sure seems like Okuayinonu suffered his foot injury during that final practice before the team's trip.
In addition to Okuayinonu, second-year defensive end Mykel Williams did not travel with the team because he's on the physically unable to perform list. There's Romello Height, who at least hasn't been ruled out but also hasn't practiced the past two weeks with an unspecified ankle injury.
Then there's Nick Bosa, the star defensive end whose season ended last year with a torn ACL, whose recovery is still in progress. He traveled with the team to the land down under but "didn't make any definitive declarations" about being able to play Thursday, according to an ESPN report. It looked like Bosa's recovery was going along well when he first arrived at camp but then suffered a setback with knee tendinitis.
"It was a long road," Bosa told reporters Wednesday. "There's some stuff I dealt with, with that patella tendon, and then I kind of ramped it a little too fast with the football stuff a month ago or whatever it was. And that kind of told me to back off. I've just been trying to get it as strong and myself as confident as I can to where I could rip the Band-Aid off and go to team stuff today."
Of course, even with White's current bill of clean health, he's dealt with his own medical issues over the past several months. Officially, he's only suffered an adductor injury early last month during practice, which he's since come back from. But then there's the other injury he suffered off the field.
In what's somehow not even a top-three wildest story of the team's offseason, an unknown assailant shot White in the ankle after an altercation involving rapper Lil Baby at a party the 49ers player was hosting in February. Speaking with the Athletic's Vic Tafur, the 27-year-old dropped quite a quote about the experience.
"When you hurt yourself in football, there's a protocol for damn near everything. Football players don't just get shot every day … I mean, I guess they do on this team," White said, referencing the shooting of Ricky Pearsall during an armed robbery attempt.
But he also described his recovery from his gunshot as "an ongoing thing" and said that it was "a touch-and-go situation right up to the beginning of training camp." Turns out even the healthiest member of the D-line has received that label only by default.
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This article originally published at The 49ers defensive line is already hanging together by a thread.