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Nick Wagoner, ESPN Staff Writer
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — On the verge of the biggest step in his latest attempt to come back from a series of injuries, San Francisco 49ers cornerback Jason Verrett took an awkward fall in practice Thursday and once again needs season-ending surgery.
Verrett, the 2014 first-round pick who looked the part of a Pro Bowl mainstay after his second NFL season, was preparing to be elevated from the practice squad to play a major role in Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams when he landed on his shoulder after jumping for a ball and falling to the ground in Thursday’s practice.
An MRI on Friday morning revealed a torn rotator cuff in Verrett’s shoulder that will require surgery and a four-to-six-month recovery, a significant blow to Verrett’s chances to return to a prominent role with the 49ers.
“He handles it like he does everything, like a man,” Niners coach Kyle Shanahan said. “But you know how it is. He’s going to be pretty down for a little bit. I hope he hangs around here because we all love him around here. I think that could help him. And this will pass, like it always does. He had a long road to get back to this point and I just told him I can’t believe how good he’s looked.”
The 49ers signed Verrett to their practice squad on Dec. 11 with an eye toward preparing him for a bigger role as the postseason neared. They elevated him to the active roster for the Christmas night loss to the Baltimore Ravens, with Verrett appearing in a regular season game for the first time since tearing his ACL in Week 1 of 2021 against the Detroit Lions.
Verrett, who spent part of the season on the Houston Texans‘ practice squad, played five snaps against the Ravens, but with the Niners locked into the NFC’s top playoff spot going into this week’s game against the Rams, he was poised for his biggest workload in more than two years.
Shanahan said Verrett was having a good practice on Thursday when he jumped for a ball and landed on the shoulder. Verrett popped back up quickly and though he favored the arm the rest of practice, he was able to finish the session. He insisted that he didn’t need an MRI, but after sleeping on it and still feeling pain, he decided to have the shoulder checked out.
“I didn’t think it would ever be possible to come back from what he has — all the knees and the Achilles and everything — and he did,” Shanahan said. “And he looked great in Houston. He looked great here. It was a perfect opportunity for him to play this week just so he could play a lot and see how he was going into the playoffs, and he got a random shoulder injury.”
Unfortunately for Verrett, he’s no stranger to working his way back from serious injuries. As a member of the Los Angeles Chargers, he tore his left ACL in 2016, an injury that kept him out of all but four games that season, and then aggravated that injury in the season opener in 2017, which cost him the rest of that season. Verrett tore his Achilles during 2018 training camp, which cost him that entire season and contributed to him appearing in just one game in 2019, his first season with the 49ers.
In 2020, Verrett played in 13 games but in 2021, he tore his right ACL in that season’s opener against Detroit. He sat out all of last season as he worked through lingering knee issues before again tearing his Achilles in November.
Including this week, Verrett will have missed 122 of a possible 163 regular-season games because of injury in his career.
When Shanahan and the Niners delivered the news to Verrett on Friday morning, he was understandably upset.
“You just try to put it in perspective for him,” Shanahan said. “It’s not like you got your knee again, it’s not like you got your Achilles or anything that’s something you can’t come back from. But I don’t think that’s stuff on his mind right now.”