The 49ers' offense has sorely missed Deebo Samuel during the team's current three-game losing streak, but it appears the unit will have its star wide receiver back soon.
Samuel sat out of San Francisco's losses to the Minnesota Vikings and Cincinnati Bengals in Weeks 7 and 8 after exiting the team's Week 6 loss to the Cleveland Browns with a shoulder injury after just nine snaps. A CT scan later in the week revealed Samuel suffered a hairline fracture of his left shoulder and would miss at least two games.
While the 49ers "wide back" is expected to be reevaluated after this week's bye, he provided an encouraging update of his own on Thursday's episode of the "Up & Adams" show.
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"I am ready to go," Samuel, joined by his son Tyshun, cheerfully told Adams when asked for a health update.
That's certainly music to the 49ers Faithful's ears, who have watch quarterback Brock Purdy and the rest of San Francisco's offense drop three straight without Samuel in the mix. While Purdy has kept the 49ers in each loss, late-game mistakes on offense and coinciding defensive lapses have kept San Francisco from getting back in the win column these past three weeks.
Per Next Gen Stats, Purdy's touchdown-to-interception ratio is 8-0 with Samuel on the field this season compared to 4-5 in the three games Samuel has missed. Purdy also has a 71.1 completion percentage with Samuel compared to a 64.6 mark without him, and there's nearly a 40-point difference in his passer rating with and without Samuel as an option.
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Given those stats, there's no denying the wideout's gravitational pull when he's active and how his presence shifts the overall outcome of the game. And even though the 49ers have struggled without him, Samuel believes his team should have no problem overcoming the adversity it faced in October after a red-hot start to the 2023 NFL season.
"I don't think [the locker room] has changed at all," Samuel told Adams, noting the team had a meeting on Tuesday. "As we look at ourselves and the coaches come down on us hard, we got to be even harder on ourselves. Losing three straight, that's just not our culture and not what we do. ...
"It's good that we a get a bye in the middle of the season so we can come back fresh and ready to go, because we know what it takes and we know the next step that it's going to take for us to get to where we want to be."
That place the 49ers want to be, of course, is hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy come February. And with Samuel back in the mix, that task will become much easier for San Francisco.