Nick Bosa Might Have Played in his Final Game with the 49ers

Nick Bosa pulled his calf Thursday in practice and will miss at least a few weeks according to Adam Schefter. The Niners are considering whether or not to place Nick Bosa on IR. Let me just help you out there, 49ers. Yes, place him on IR. Your whole organizational philosophy of rushing players back a little too soon from injuries doesn't work unless their name is George Kittle or Fred Warner. Give Nick Bosa credit. He did try to come back early. This was the second ACL tear at his knee, not the first. The first is a 9-to-12 recovery. The second is 12-to-18 months. It's been 11 months since he hurt it last year. He came back. He played week one because we all know that game meant so much to the 49ers. It didn't mean anything to the Rams, but it meant a lot to the Niners. They won. Then they had to beat the Dolphins. They had to have Bosa. They couldn't have beat the Dolphins without Bosa, so he was out there running around, falling around. Clearly not right, and now he's going to miss an extended period of time. Maybe the Niners would just let him rehab completely, fully. This wouldn't happen, but now you got another setback, another new injury, whatever you want to call it. That's not good. Now, best-case scenario, he comes back in a few weeks, and the Niners are still 5-1 or 4-2, and he makes a full recovery, and they're fine. This is just a blip, but I don't know. It doesn't seem great. What we know is that he played two games and couldn't get to the third, and he's almost 30. Last year, his knee just fell apart week three on a nondescript run play, so maybe he'll come back and make a full recovery, but he couldn't do it in training camp. All the rest hasn't worked. When they bring him back isn't working. They don't have a good feel for when he's going to be ready, if he's ever going to be ready again, and I'm starting to think maybe he won't. Maybe he's past his sell-by date, to use a crude metaphor. Three ACL tears? What are we really expecting at this point? He's going to have a $54 million cap hit next year, which I guarantee that won't actually come to fruition, and they're not going to extend him, I wouldn't expect. This might be his last year on the 49ers. He might be in the free agent market next year. He probably knows that. He's not going to be rehabbing during that time. He's going to rehab now, which I understand. Do the Niners trade for an edge rusher to replace him? Maybe, but no one's trading edge rushers in week three. No one's tanking and waving the white flag in week three. The Niners got to survive the next month, month and a half without him, and they can't, but really, they got to focus on getting Bosa back. It's going to be tough to replace him midseason. Max Crosby isn't walking through that door, so what they got to do is be as cautious as possible, which is a foreign concept for them. Do what the Rams are doing with Myles Garrett. They don't really care about him on the field in September, October. They just feel like if they get him to December in one piece, they'll be in the thick of things, and he could help then. That's got to be the Niners' approach with Nick Bosa. Forget September. Forget October. If you can stay in the hunt, which you should be able to do without him, you did it last year without him, and you can bring him back down the stretch. Now you got something. That should be the plan. Please, please proceed with caution for the first time ever.