While the San Francisco 49ers emerged victorious in Week 1 by dominating the Los Angeles Rams down in Australia, it wasn’t all good news as both De’Zhaun Stribling and Jake Tonges went down with injuries and had to leave the game.
Word has just come out about the severity of Stribling’s injury, and he reportedly has a deltoid sprain in his ankle and is set to miss at least a month.
That’s better than a season-ending injury, but the Niners have no one to blame but themselves.
Stribling came out of the game at one point for San Francisco because his ankle wasn’t quite right. But he was back on the field shortly after that and came up limp without even being hit, so clearly he was not good enough to go back into the game.
49ers could've been more cautious with De'Zhaun Stribling injury
That’s just a failure on the part of the 49ers and their training staff. They needed to be more cautious with him and keep him out longer, or maybe even take him out of the game entirely when the ankle first flared up.
It’s easy to look back in retrospect and say that, but with the crazy number of injuries the Niners have had in recent years, they should have learned by this point they need to be cautious.
Now, they have to consider whether Stribling should have surgery or not. Undergoing surgery would probably end his season, but if the Niners have learned anything from the Ricky Pearsall situation, it’s that having surgery earlier rather than later may be the most prudent move.
At least San Francisco should be OK at wide receiver even if Stribling has to miss a decent amount of time. Mike Evans, Deebo Samuel, and Demarcus Robinson all had touchdown catches in Week 1, and quarterback Brock Purdy already trusts and has a rapport with them.
Still, the fear is that after those three, San Francisco's depth gets more iffy. Jordan Watkins and Jacob Cowing have shown flashes of being solid receivers, but whether they can be reliable targets for Purdy remains to be seen.
It’s just a shame that Stribling went down almost immediately because he looked so good in the preseason and seemed like he would fit perfectly into the offense. The Niners shouldn’t have let him go back out there, but now, they have to be smart deciding how to address his injury going forward.
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