Sourdough Sam
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- Mar 20, 2019
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You might want to close your eyes if you're a 49ers fan, as the team could be without over half a dozen starters in the Week 3 matchup against the New York Giants. Kyle Shanahan revealed on Friday that the team will be without their star tight end George Kittle for the second-straight week. Kittle returned to practice in West Virginia on Wednesday while working his way back from a knee injury suffered in the season opener. Following talks with the tight end and accounting for the turf field at MetLife Stadium, it was deemed to be safer to keep Kittle out for Sunday's matchup.
"Turf's not good in general, I don't care where it is," Shanahan said. "Everyone knows that turf, there's about 30 percent more injuries on turf than there are on grass, so that's an issue everywhere you go. We understand it's new turf. So usually brand-new turf is a little bit worse than all the other bad turf. So it just needs to get broken in. Our players understand that the NFL has done everything to check it out. It is what it is. I mean, it's just another turf field and of course we'd rather play on grass because it is safer, but that's not something that's on our minds at all anymore."
The 49ers will be without their starting quarterback, meaning it's the Nick Mullens show on Sunday. Jimmy Garoppolo was officially ruled out for Week 3 with a high ankle sprain. C.J. Beathard will dress behind Mullens against the Giants.
San Francisco suffered another hit to their defense as Dre Greenlaw was ruled out for Sunday. The linebacker suffered a quad injury during the 49ers Week 2 win, which was later revealed to be worse than the team expected. Former undrafted linebackers Azeez Al-Shaair and Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles are in line to see snaps alongside Fred Warner and Kwon Alexander with Greenlaw out.
Ahkello Witherspoon landed on the team's injury report on Friday while experiencing hamstring tightness. Shanahan said if Witherspoon is unable to go, he is confident in Jason Verrett, who missed the first two weeks of the season with a hamstring injury, to step in to help fill the void of Richard Sherman.
"I am very confident in Jason," Shanahan said. "He had a real good week of practice and a real good camp before he hurt his hamstring. Ahkello had a tight hamstring yesterday (and) tweaked it a little bit. So he was limited (on Friday). So, we'll see how that goes over the next 24 hours."
Here's a look at the full injury report heading into the 49ers Week 3 matchup against the Giants: