San Francisco 49ers head coach Chip Kelly met with the media today and was asked about the status of OLB Aaron Lynch, who has missed nine games this season. He missed the first four for violating the NFL substance abuse policy and the last five due to a high ankle sprain.
"We think he's made progress," Kelly told reporters. "I think one of the things that will be interesting is can he go two days in a row. Wednesday and Thursday are obviously the big work days for everybody in the National Football League. So, he made it through yesterday. What will his response physically be to the workload that he placed on it yesterday? So, we'll see and hopefully, if we can get him through, we'd love to be able to get him up and get him ready to go on Sunday. But, we're pleased with how he handled Tuesday and Wednesday. We'll see how the next couple days go with him."
Kelly was asked about preseason standout Marcus Rush and if his name has ever come into the discussion on who should be placed on the active roster. "We've always talked about everybody that's available to us," Kelly answered. "The biggest thing for us when we get to, you're talking the bottom of the roster, is a special teams spot. So, Marcus Ball came up really to take Shayne Skov's spot as a special teams player and did a really nice job for us in his first game. So, it's kind of when you get to the bottom part of the roster is that's what you're really looking at.
"We didn't put Aaron down. If we had put Aaron down for the year then you'd want to be bringing in another outside linebacker. But, we didn't bring in another outside linebacker because we were always hoping that we were going to get Aaron back. So, if we were to be out an outside linebacker, then that's really what we would be looking at."
Kelly was asked if putting Lynch on injured reserve had been discussed. "No," he answered. "We haven't had that discussion yet."
A question about Lynch's weight came up. Kelly was asked about the 30 pounds that Lynch needed to lose. "I don't think it was 30 pounds," he said. "I think he was in the 290's and he's in the 280's now. I'm not great at math, but I don't think it was that much."
Kelly was then told that Lynch had told reporters that he had lost 30 pounds. "Maybe he's not good at math either," Kelly joked. "I don't know. 30's a lot of weight. That's like going from 290 to 260. I think he's in the 280 range now. 275/280 range. We'll kind of see where he is."
Kelly said that Lynch was one of the leaders in the team's conditioning tests and that they have not had any issues with him in that area.
Another weight note that Kelly provided was that quarterback Colin Kaepernick said he was 219 pounds the other day.