49ers news: Remaining OTAs, minicamps cancelled after injuries

After injury losses to two key backups, the 49ers announced they were cancelling the remainder of OTAs and mandatory minicamp.

Perhaps San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan is admitting his team needs to take a bit of an offseason break.

A day after the Niners lost two key backup players to injuries during the third and final week of organized team activities, offensive lineman Justin Skule (ACL) and defensive back Tarvarius Moore (Achilles), head coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters the team was going to cancel the remainder of OTA practices.

As well as the mandatory minicamp session, which was scheduled to begin on June 15.

Shanahan’s comments:

"We’re totally done. We really finished up our exit meetings today, really, with everybody. We’re just going to keep the rookies around here for a little bit, some more than others. I kind of decided a while ago we weren’t going to do minicamp. I rarely do do minicamp when we get nine OTAs. We usually do one practice, and we have like a team-building thing throughout that."

While neither Skule nor Moore were guaranteed to make the regular-season 53-man roster, their respective injuries are an ominous sign after San Francisco suffered one of the worst injury-attrition seasons in recent NFL history a year ago.

According to Football Outsiders, the 49ers had an adjusted-games-lost metric of 166.6 last year, which was by far the worst in the entire league.

In contrast, the Super Bowl-winning Tampa Bay Buccaneers‘ AGL was the best at 30.6.

Shanahan also reported the Niners had nearly an entire crop of their 90-man offseason roster reporting for OTAs, the only exception being EDGE Dee Ford, who had previously been rehabbing from a 2020 back injury but returned to his home with approved time away from the facility.

Either way, the bigger takeaway is Shanahan looking like he’ll want to avoid any further injury risks as much as possible, and it certainly seems as if the head coach is responding to the major setbacks to both Skule and Moore.

Even if Shanahan said it was his plan to cancel some of the offseason workouts anyway.

For San Francisco, the only hope is another rash of injuries won’t pop up anytime soon, particularly after such a terrible recent history of suffering such damaging injuries last year.

The 49ers will resume on-field workouts in training camp, beginning on July 31 in preparation for a three-game preseason schedule in advance of Week 1 this September.