49ers news: George Kittle was limited at practice today

The San Francisco 49ers had their first practice of the week as they prepare for the New England Patriots ahead of Week 4. Here’s the practice report from Wednesday.

Did not participate in practice:

DT Javon Hargrave (triceps)
WR Deebo Samuel (calf)
LT Trent Williams (illness)
LB Dee Winters (ankle)

Hargrave will remain on the practice report until the 49ers officially place him on the season-ending Injured Reserve list.

Williams didn’t practice on Wednesday for seemingly all of the previous two years, so this isn’t an outlier.

You can tell the coaching staff is high on Winters. They want him to play, and Kyle Shanahan alluded to that this past Monday:

“Just planned on it before the game. We wanted to do that early going into this year also. But Dee just got hurt there, I think in that last preseason game, so that set that back a little bit. He’s gotten healthy and we planned on doing that early, just like the week before we planned on doing it with [S George Odum] G.O. and [S] Malik [Mustapha]. We started that and he got hurt on, he reaggravated his ankle on the fake punt.”

Here’s Kyle’s response when he was asked if that was due to dissatisfaction in De’Vondre Campbell’s play:

“No. It’s, we want to keep working to get the best guys out there, and Dee has had a good camp, and he showed that he deserves the chance to push him. He did good on the plays that he did when he was in there, and hopefully, he’ll get healthy so we can keep doing the same stuff.”

But Winters can’t play if he isn’t healthy. He brings a different level of energy and athleticism that the Niners could sorely use on that side of the ball. Hopefully, Winters gets healthier sooner rather than later.

According to The San Francisco Chronicle’s Eric Branch, Campbell told him that he was caught off-guard when Winters went in for him.