49ers Lose Deebo Samuel; Falcons, Cardinals and Browns Round Out the Day
The league's news on this Wednesday is mostly medical, which is how October tends to go. San Francisco is down its most versatile skill player and a slice of its depth chart, Atlanta got the good version of a quarterback scare, Cleveland added names to a list that was already too long, and Arizona is being told by a former employee to stop pretending.
Start with the 49ers. Deebo Samuel will miss multiple weeks with the hamstring injury he suffered in Sunday's win over Seattle, and Kyle Shanahan said Monday it will be at least a couple of weeks. The injury came on a running play, and Samuel was ruled out in the third quarter. San Francisco finished that game with only three healthy wide receivers.
That last detail is the whole story. A receiver room that thin in a single afternoon means there's no spare body to absorb what Samuel does as both a receiver and a runner. My read is the opposite of panic: Shanahan leans heavier, more tight-end personnel, more carries for the backs, fewer downfield throws that need a receiver to win on the second level. The part I keep returning to is that the hamstring went on a rushing attempt, because Samuel's rushing attempts are the least replaceable thing he does. I'll be wrong if next week's plan looks exactly like the last one.
Shanahan's press conference compounded it. He said Juice will be out for the game, James Thompson out, Sigel out. Michael Williams is questionable. Stout is questionable. That's more outs than questionables, and it's the shape of a 49ers roster getting tested in the same week it loses its best Swiss-army piece. Depth like that doesn't show up until the fourth quarter, when a rotation that usually goes four deep is going two deep.
Atlanta's scare looks like it ends early. Michael Penix's rib injury is not considered serious, per ESPN. Any item that opens with a quarterback and the word rib reads as a crisis until somebody says otherwise, and the Falcons got the otherwise. I expect Penix to practice in some form and play. If Atlanta caps his reps, that's maintenance, not a signal about Sunday. The Falcons' season was always about what Penix becomes, and a rib doesn't change that evaluation.
Cleveland's injury report got longer, with Judkins and Schwesinger both dealing with ankles and both day-to-day ahead of hosting Baltimore. Day-to-day is what clubs say when they don't want to write the words week-to-week, so I'd plan on the Browns being shorthanded, and I'd plan on the offense getting more conservative to compensate. The Browns have been papering over availability all season, and Baltimore is not the opponent you want to meet while doing it.
The week's non-news item is ESPN's feature on NFL players coaching their kids, built from conversations with 16 of them, Matthew Stafford and Bud Dupree among the names. It's a soft story and I'll defend it anyway, since it's the rare piece about these players with no roster math in it. Nothing in it moves a snap count or a number. It just reminds you these are people with a job and an off switch, which sounds like nothing until you've spent a day reading injury reports.
Arizona is 1-4, and former Cardinals general manager Steve Keim wrote that it's time for rookie Carson Beck to start over Jacoby Brissett. Keim no longer works for the club, which is precisely why his opinion carries more than a coach's non-answer would. My position is simple: start Beck. A 1-4 team running a bridge starter lives in the worst spot in football, competitive enough to lose close games and learning nothing about the years that actually matter. The risk is real, because a rookie's first starts get graded against a 1-4 roster rather than against the rookie. If Brissett rips off a couple of wins, the Cardinals are closer than their record says and I'll take the loss on this one. I don't think that happens, and I'd rather find out in October than in a meaningless December.
