The San Francisco 49ers on Thursday shelved two players for at least eight weeks. The team placed rookie wide receiver Jalen Hurd and cornerback Jason Verrett on injured reserve. Both are eligible to return after Week 12, and head coach Kyle Shanahan didn't want to dismiss the possibility of either coming back and helping the 49ers down the stretch.
"Both of them are candidates (for short-term IR), definitely," Shanahan told reporters on Thursday.
Verrett suffered a setback during his 14 snaps (three on defense) against the Pittsburgh Steelers on September 22. That was after the veteran cornerback, who has struggled to overcome injuries during his NFL career, was eased back into action after suffering an ankle sprain in training camp.
"After the Pittsburgh game, his knee just flared up over the week," Shanahan said. "Coming back from the bye, the doctor's advice was he needed to rest it a lot longer so we're trying to do the best thing for him because he's not ready to go."
Some would say that, given his injury history, the 49ers gambled on signing Verrett. The cornerback has now landed on injured reserve in five of his six NFL seasons. Shanahan was asked if Verrett was a gamble that just hasn't worked out.
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"Yeah, it definitely hasn't so far," Shanahan responded, "but we definitely like the player and the person we gambled on, and he's done everything he's can to get back. The most unfortunate thing for him was when you have that much football off because of some pretty serious injuries, and then you get a pretty bad ankle sprain in your fourth or fifth day of practice (during training camp), he missed all of it again.
"And then he's trying to come back from his normal stuff, which he had a chance to, but he had a little bit of a setback from it, and it just put him behind the eight-ball too much. It's a guy that we've all seen his talent, and if you if you've been around the guy, you definitely believe in the guy. He just didn't get the time that he needed, especially with that setback in training camp, and then his knee reacting the way it did versus Pittsburgh."
Hurd has been dealing with a stress fracture in his back since preseason and was inactive for the 49ers' first three games as the team tried to give him the rest he needed. The hope was that Hurd could return soon.
"He's just got to rest," Shanahan said of Hurd. "Any time you've got a stress fracture in your back -- that was the hard thing with it. There's guys that come back in three weeks. There's guys it's taken 10 weeks. And there's just as good of a chance to come back in three weeks as there is (to return in) 10 weeks.
"We took that chance. It hasn't been healing the way we want it to. The pain is still there, so we've got to give him at least another month. That's the reason we've got to put him on IR."
