What remains unclear is if McKinnon will land on season-ending or short-term injured reserve. The latter of which would allow him to practice after Week 6 and be activated after Week 8. The short-term designation, however, would require San Francisco to carry McKinnon on the 53-player roster before placing him on injured reserve, taking up a roster spot and exposing another player to other NFL teams.
The 49ers signed McKinnon to a four-year deal on March 14, 2018. He has not played a regular-season snap with San Francisco, and his latest setback came after one practice last week. Although, the 49ers didn't offer too many details on the situation.
"I can tell you that again, yesterday (Tuesday), we brought him out, and it's a real bummer because he keeps getting to the final step," general manager John Lynch said last week on KNBR. "And the final step is actually playing NFL football, particularly at his position where you've got to make hard cuts, you've got to put your foot in the ground.
"We did it a month ago, and we got to that step, and he kind of regressed. And I would say yesterday, we had a similar situation. So we're trying to get to really what's the root cause of the problems that he's having.
"Just because he's kind of working through this, we're working it, I'm going to kind of leave it at that, but yesterday was not encouraging from that standpoint. What that means, we're not sure yet, and we're working hard to find that out."
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