The 49ers returned from their 10-day Eastern road trip to begin the 2021 season with a 20 record and facing an alarming question they never expected to be answering so early in the year.
Who is going to play running back?
That already was an issue before San Francisco could even get out of the middle of September as the 49ers lost explosive lead back Raheem Mostert to a season-ending knee injury in Week 1 at Detroit, then saw each of their top three remaining backs go down to injury in a five-minute span the next week during a slugfest victory at Philadelphia.
The only healthy running back San Francisco had at the end of that game was fringe veteran Trenton Cannon, who has carried the football 12 times over the last three seasons for three different teams and was picked up off the free-agent scrap heap only after the 49ers lost Mostert.
A dire situation for the San Francisco backfield? Sure.
But fear not. The 49ers know how to find running backs and they know how to develop them. And they never stop looking for ways to do it and places to find them. Who knows? Maybe they can even turn Cannon into something special under the tutelage of San Francisco coaches once they fit him into Kyle Shanahan’s outside-zone scheme.
The 49ers have done it before with just about everybody else they’ve inserted since Shanahan and his staff arrived to run the operation in 2017. Just as Shanahan has done it before with just about every running back he’s inserted into his system since he first began running an NFL offense as a coordinator with the Houston Texans in 2008.
This story is from the October 2021 edition of Niner Report.
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This story is from the October 2021 edition of Niner Report.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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Raheem Mostert was primed this year to be the centerpiece of one of the NFL’s most dynamic offenses, featured as the lead performer in San Francisco’s grinding rushing attack while making his climb among the league’s top running backs.
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In the weeks that follow after you read this — and perhaps sometime even sooner than that — Kyle Shanahan and the rest of the 49ers organization will make a titanic decision that will have present, future and perhaps even everlasting implications for the franchise. It will chart the course for the team’s pivotal 2021 season while determining whether San Francisco really does have the juice to return to powerhouse status and again be considered a legitimate contender to get back to the Super Bowl.
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Fred Warner vaulted to stardom with a spectacular 2020 season — and the 49ers rewarded him this summer with a $95.225 million deal that makes him the highest-paid inside linebacker in NFL history. By today’s standards, Warner’s performance last year was worth the money as he posted an Approximate Value of 19 — matching the highest score ever recorded by a San Francisco defender according to a Pro Football Reference formula that puts a single number on each player-season across all positions since 1960. Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman (twice) also had seasons with an AV of 19 as they dominate this list of the greatest individual seasons by a linebacker in 49ers history.
