Kyle Shanahan blaming the Metlife Stadium turf for injuries

Kyle Shanahan thinks the Metlife Stadium turf had something to do with the 49ers injuries on Sunday

The 49ers lost Solomon Thomas, Jimmy Garoppolo and Nick Bosa to substantial injuries on Sunday in their romp of the New York Jets. While they’ll take the win, it came with an obvious price, as Bosa could be out for the season and Garoppolo is expected to miss a few weeks at least. At a certain point, this many players lost due to injury no longer becomes circumstance.

A natural reason for the number of key contributors lost to injury would be the lack of a preseason, or even much of a training camp for that matter. Typically players are more prepared for the start of the regular season whereas the pandemic eliminated that potential this year. But that’s not what Shanahan thinks.

“Who knows? I don’t know exactly why it happened,” Shanahan said in his postgame press conference. “But as far as the feeling that was on the sidelines, I know that’s as many knee injuries and ankle stuff and people getting caught on the turf as I’ve ever been a part of. From what I saw, the other team did too. I know our players talked about it the entire game, just how sticky the turf was. I think that was the first time people played on it, I think. But yeah, it was something our guys were concerned about right away. The results definitely made that a lot stronger. Unfortunately it’s a place we’ve got to go back to next week.”

Trent Williams and Arik Armstead reflected their coach’s comments, with the latter taking his view to Twitter.

The 49ers have anxiety about playing at Metlife Stadium, which makes their schedule even more unfortunate. San Francisco plays the Giants next week.