Jason Verrett is once again working his way back from a devastating injury. The veteran cornerback showed his worth in 2020, proving to be one of the defense's best players and entered his 2021 campaign as one of the 49ers' starting cornerbacks, but suffered a season-ending ACL injury during Week 1.
Verrett's career has been injury-plagued. While he has played in the league for eight years, the cornerback has avoided landing on injured reserve just twice (2015, 2020).
Head coach Kyle Shanahan spoke with reporters before Saturday's practice and was asked about Verrett's timeline. The cornerback started training camp on the physically-unable-to-perform list.
"We would love to get him into camp," Shanahan said. "We'd love to get him ready for Week 1. I think that's his mindset, so I'll never go against him on that. But I'm definitely ready, if he's not ready for Week 1, to get him to whenever he's ready. If he comes back Week 1, Week 4, Week 8, at the end of the year, everyone knows how good and talented of a player he is, but he's one of the best leaders on our team, too."
Verrett joined the 49ers in 2019. He was working his way back from an Achilles tendon injury and appeared in only one game that season.
"I thought our first year we had him here was similar," Shanahan shared. "I thought we brought him back a hair too early because he was healthy, but he didn't have his legs back quite yet. And he got thrown into that game versus Pittsburgh in Week 3, got beat on a go route, and that's when we saw he wasn't quite there yet. Then it's hard to start back. So we definitely don't want to do anything too soon and give him time to get back to being Jason."