News broke Friday that San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa suffered a pulled calf during Thursday's practice and is expected to miss multiple weeks. NFL insiders Ian Rapoport and Adam Schefter reported that the team was trying to determine whether to place Bosa on injured reserve.
It sounds unlikely that he will be.
Schefter later reported that the 49ers are now leaning toward not placing Bosa on injured reserve. Doing so would open a roster spot but sideline the defensive end for at least four weeks.
RELATED Nick Bosa out multiple weeks with calf injury
The injury's severity doesn't appear to be driving the decision. Instead, it may be more about roster logistics. The 49ers already have several players on injured reserve, and only eight players can return from IR during the season. Adding Bosa to that list with the intention of bringing him back after four weeks would complicate those decisions.
The 49ers now are leaning toward not placing DE Nick Bosa on injured reserve in part because they're running out of injured reserve spaces, per source. https://t.co/15vjNdar3L
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 25, 2026
The fact that the 49ers were even considering placing Bosa on injured reserve suggests that the defensive end could miss at least four weeks because of this latest setback. That's a significant amount of time to be without your best pass rusher.
San Francisco will face the Arizona Cardinals and Denver Broncos over the next two weeks at Levi's Stadium. The 49ers will then travel to Lumen Field to face the Seattle Seahawks before hosting the Washington Commanders.
On Thursday, head coach Kyle Shanahan discussed the complicated decisions behind placing players on injured reserve, particularly when the team believes they could return and contribute later in the season.
Shanahan stressed that losing so many defensive linemen this early in the season is unusual. His comments came before news broke that Bosa would miss time.
"Now you got a chance with everyone but [DT] Alfred [Collins] to get them back, but when you lose that many guys, you can't sign five new guys to replace them unless you put all those guys on IR," Shanahan said during a radio interview. "But all those guys can come back. They're not all out for the year except for Alfred. So you want to make sure that they're all IR-to-return.
"But the odds are, just the way football goes, that other people will get hurt with 15 more games to go. And if we use all those for everybody, then we could have someone get hurt three weeks from now that's only going to be out five weeks, and we can't do it. So it becomes real complicated.
"There's no right or wrong answer until you find out the future what happens. So you're trying to make your best guess on where to risk certain things and where to tough it out."
More info on: Nick Bosa, Alfred Collins
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