The league ignored the hot potato as long as it could.
After multiple requests from multiple media outlets went unanswered (we sent two emails and heard the soft sound cricket wings in response), the league has leaked to Mark Maske of the publish-no-endorsement Washington Post that it is “reviewing” 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa’s wearing of a “Make America Great Again” hat on the field after Sunday night’s win over the Cowboys.
“Make America Great Again,” if you’ve been completely disconnected from society for the last nine years, is the rallying cry for three-time presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Bosa videobombed the interview that NBC’s Melissa Stark was conducting with 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, tight end George Kittle, and running back Isaac Guerendo. Bosa pointed to the hat, which was hard to read because it had gold letters on white material.
Per Maske, Bosa isn’t facing a suspension, but he could be fined. Maske adds that no decision is expected before next week.
Right. After the election. Even though fines routinely are issued in the days after a given slate of games, the NFL’s strategy for minimizing huffing, puffing, and/or blowing the house down from a vocal minority of fans consists of: (1) saying nothing about it at all until the bad-news witching-hour dump; and (2) doing nothing until all votes have been cast and counted.
Really, there’s nothing to review. It’s a violation or it isn’t. The plain language of the rule says it is. The business interests of the NFL says to delay.
Probably until right about this time next Friday afternoon.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced the names of nine coaches who have been selected as semifinalists for election as part of the Class of 2025.
The group features four Super Bowl-winning coaches and three who won multiple rings. Tom Coughlin won two titles with the Giants, Mike Shanahan won two with the Broncos, and George Seifert won two with the 49ers.
Mike Holmgren is also a semifinalist and he won a Super Bowl with the Packers while falling short when he took the Seahawks to the game later in his career.
Bill Arnsparger, Chuck Knox, Dan Reeves, Marty Schottenheimer, and Clark Shaughnessy are the other semifinalists. Coughlin, Holmgren, Reeves, Schottenheimer, Shanahan and Shaughnessy were all semifinalists for election last year as well.
The members of the coach blue-ribbon committee will select one finalist to be presented to the entire selection committee for possible election in 2025.
Christian McCaffrey is continuing to work his way back to the field, as bilateral Achilles tendinitis has sidelined him for the 49ers’ first eight games.
San Francisco is on its bye this week, but General Manager John Lynch noted in a Wednesday morning interview with KNBR that McCaffrey remains on track to have his practice window opened next week to potentially play against the Buccaneers.
“The ideal scenario versus Tampa Bay is that he continues to — we keep using this terminology — but ramp up, which just means increase the volume of work that he’s doing,” Lynch said, via David Bonilla of 49erswebzone.com. “He’s been doing that, and he hasn’t had any setbacks. The hope is we take it up another notch this week. Provided that goes well, we’re kind of opening that window, allowing him to go back to practice. IR players can work to the side. They can’t get involved in practice. And so, Christian has been kind of on that plan.
“And now, hopefully, you increase the volume this week. You hope you have no setbacks. I’d expect it to kind of go that way. I pray that it goes that way because he’s done really well. He hasn’t had any of those [setbacks]. And if so, then Monday, we hope to have him practicing with our team, and that’d be a really good deal for us. We all know he’s the reigning offensive player of the year. He’s a special game-changing player for us.”
McCaffrey rushed for 1,459 yards with 14 touchdowns and caught 67 passes for 564 yards with seven TDs last season.
With Jordan Mason and Isaac Guerendo making an impact at running back in 2024, the 49ers do have options to limit McCaffrey’s workload when he comes back.
“With a guy like Christian, I think, regardless whether we had guys that could spell him or not, you do what’s right for the player,” Lynch said. “That’s what we’ll always do. There’s been a really good plan in place this whole time. We’re not there yet. We’ve got to get there. But those things will start to be — OK, here’s what he’s done in practice, here’s how much volume, provided he’s ready to play, that we feel like he can play.
“And then ... we do have the depth where we feel like we can do that. I think if you have Christian out there for five plays, you’re a better team. There’s a reason we put all that draft capital into trading for him, and I think it’s been a good deal for us. I think everybody would say that. So we just want him back on the field, and we’ll figure it out from there.”
The 49ers have dealt with so many injuries during the season that it’s been easy to forget that they’ve also been without one key player since February.
Linebacker Dre Greenlaw tore his Achilles during the Super Bowl and head coach Kyle Shanahan gave an update on his extended recovery during an appearance on KNBR on Tuesday. Shanahan didn’t have an exact date for when Greenlaw will be able to get back on the field, but he made it sound like it won’t be too much longer.
“I think Dre is getting close,” Shanahan said, via 49ersWebzone.com. “I don’t want to put a timetable on it. I’d probably be surprised [if it was] right after the bye week, but I do think after that, it’ll be close to being week-to-week, which means, if everything goes right, that’ll be a sooner week than later week for whatever diagnosis that is.”
Getting Greenlaw back won’t be exactly the same thing as making a trade deadline addition because he won’t have the same need to acclimate himself to a new situation, but it could have the same kind of impact on the 49ers in the second half of the season.
49ers running back Christian McCaffrey will remain in Santa Clara this week, working to return from bilateral Achilles tendinitis.
The 49ers plan for him to return to practice next week following the team’s off week and, if all goes well, return to the lineup in Week 10.
“We hope it does go that way,” coach Kyle Shanahan told KNBR on Tuesday, via 49erswebzone.com. “It’s been trending that way, and it’s been ever since we shut him down and gone through these real slow steps. It’s getting there. He hasn’t had a setback, and hopefully, he has a real good week, and we can get him into practice next week, which obviously would be huge for us.”
McCaffrey has not played this season, going on injured reserve Sept. 14.
Once the 49ers open McCaffrey’s practice window, they have 21 days to activate him to the active roster. Otherwise, he will revert to IR for the rest of the season.
You can disagree with Jim Trotter regarding his views. There can be no disagreement that he has true courage.
After being fired by the NFL for daring to question the Commissioner — twice — during Super Bowl press conferences about newsroom diversity and inclusion in the NFL Media newsroom (the case was settled earlier this month), Trotter took a job with The Athletic. On Tuesday, he went public with his frustrations regarding the extent to which his column about Nick Bosa’s recent on-field MAGA hat was edited.
“Full disclosure, this is the watered-down version of the original column,” Trotter tweeted. “I was not allowed to properly, IMO, contextualize the significance and consequence of the moment because, I was told, I’d be in violation of the NYT’s journalistic standards regarding sports and political commentary. But that’s a discussion for another day.”
The New York Times issued a tomato/tomahto statement to AwfulAnnouncing.com, explaining that the Times had nothing to do with the editorial decisions made by the sports website it owns: “The New York Times standards played no role in this process. The story went through the normal editing process at The Athletic. We don’t publicly discuss our editorial decision making.”
Trotter, who clarified that the watering down was done by The Athletic and not the Times, did publicly discuss the editorial decision making. Folks at The Athletic might be agitated that he did.
If so, too bad. Let the man speak his mind. He’s a columnist. Let him write his column. So what if the column blurs the line between sports and political commentary? Bosa did it first; that’s why the issue is relevant.
When athletes choose to make sports political (and they have every right to do it), sports media has an obligation not to shy away from the issue but to analyze the activity and its ramifications.
Trotter’s point is that, if the NFL does nothing regarding Bosa’s blatant violation of the rules regarding the display of political messages, the NFL will have created a double standard as to Bosa and Colin Kaepernick, who was shunned for making a statement in a way that fully complied with the rules as written.
In Kaepernick’s case, evidence developed during his collusion grievance showed that the NFL chose to cater to the chunk of the fan base that hated Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem and ignored a similarly-sized percentage of the fan base that supported him. If the NFL stays silent as to Bosa, it will once again be kowtowing to a vocal minority that responds to legitimate dissent with hatred, insults, and threats.
49ers cornerback Charvarius Ward announced the death of his daughter Amani Joy on Tuesday.
Amani was set to turn two years old in November and Ward wrote on Instagram that he is “heartbroken” by the loss.
“She was the best blessing we could have asked for, and her joyous spirit made us smile from ear to ear,” Ward wrote. “She taught us to have patience, trust, and a positive outlook on life. She showed us true strength and bravery. She overcame adversity at a young age and was always happy, lighting up every room with her smile. Having the privilege of being her parents and seeing the world through her eyes has changed us for the better. She will forever be daddy’s best friend and mommy’s little girl. We’ll miss you and love you forever, Amani Joy.”
The 49ers released a statement saying they were “devastated” by the news of Amani’s death and sent “love and support” to Ward and his family.
After Sunday night’s Cowboys-49ers game, NBC’s Melissa Stark was interviewing a trio of 49ers. Teammate Nick Bosa showed up briefly, wearing a hat and pointing to it.
Because it was white with gold lettering (and not the usual red with white lettering), the message wasn’t obvious at first. It said, “Make America Great Again.”
Regardless of which candidate in the upcoming presidential election any hat worn by Bosa (or anyone else) would have worn before, during, or after the game, it’s a clear violation of the rulebook.
As flagged by Alex Simon of SFGate.com, the plain language of Rule 5, Article 4, Section 8 applies to post-game messages from players:
“Throughout the period on game day that a player is visible to the stadium and television audience (including in pregame warm-ups, in the bench area, and during postgame interviews in the locker room or on the field), players are prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages either in writing or illustration, unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office. . . . The League will not grant permission for any club or player to wear, display, or otherwise convey messages, through helmet decals, arm bands, jersey patches, mouthpieces, or other items affixed to game uniforms or equipment, which relate to political activities or causes, other non-football events, causes or campaigns, or charitable causes or campaigns.” (Emphasis added.)
Simon asked the league if Bosa violated the rule, but he had not gotten a response. We’ve asked the league also.
That’s a non-partisan question. If the message supported Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or any other candidate for any other office, the rule would still be broken.
During his post-game press conference, Bosa declined to elaborate on the situation: “I’m not gonna talk too much about it, but I think it’s an important time.”
It wouldn’t have been a violation of the rules for him to explain why he thinks it an important time, and why he believes it’s important to support the candidate he chooses to support. He would have been fully within the rules to do it — just as former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick acted fully within NFL rules when he chose to kneel during the national anthem as a form of protest.
It will be interesting to see what the league does. Because even if the league applies the rule as written, someone will undoubtedly twist it into the league being run by left-wing radicals who are trying to silence players.
You know, some of the same folks who were so intent on silencing Kaepernick.
After Sunday night’s loss to the 49ers, Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs confronted Mike Leslie of WFAA regarding a second-quarter tweet that questioned Diggs’s effort on a long catch and run by San Francisco tight end George Kittle. On Monday, Diggs addressed the situation on teammate Micah Parsons’s podcast.
“I just felt like it was unnecessary,” Diggs said regarding Leslie’s tweet. “I just felt like he was trying to use my name for clicks. And after the game I just happened to see it. I looked, I clicked on it, I seen who it was, and I was like, ‘Oh, he’s right here. I just saw you.’ So I went up to him, and I just spoke how I felt.
“I feel there was a lot of emotions just losing, coming off the game, and we’re fresh off the loss. I’m a competitor, so I’m wanting to win. So just a lot of emotions. I kind of let my emotions get the best of me. But at the end of the day it still doesn’t make it right for anybody just to be saying anything or just trying to throw dirt on your name or make you seem like you were doing bad or a bad job, because I felt I played my hardest game yesterday. I felt like I did everything I could. I felt like I was tackling, setting the edges, just doing everything to help my team win. And for him to try to throw that on my name, it just didn’t sit right with me, because he was like completely wrong.”
Diggs made it clear that he has no problem with being called out if he does something that justifies criticism. He disagrees that he deserved criticism on that play.
“If I was wrong, like if I gave up the play, gave up the touchdown or something like, I can’t say nothing,” Diggs said. “Like, I have to take that on the chin. But it’s like you’re just anything, I’m not going for that. I’m not going to just allow you to try to make me seem out of that play, make me seem like I’m the problem. That’s not cool. And you’re right here. You work for the Cowboys — you’re not [working] for the Cowboys, you work with us. Like, you might not know what’s going on, but you know that wasn’t on me. So it just was weird to me. And I just didn’t like that.”
He clearly didn’t like it. And he clearly let his emotions get the better of him, as confirmed by the fact that he refused to speak to reporters in the locker room. As coach Mike McCarthy said Monday, Diggs and other players sometimes need to take the high road.
Still, the fact that something from roughly two hours earlier set Diggs off shows how the frustration and pressure is getting to the Cowboys, who are only one loss away from matching the total of five they had in each of the three prior seasons. With nine games to go in 2024.
49ers tight end George Kittle wore a T-shirt that read “Fuck Dallas” under his uniform last season. He briefly lifted his jersey to display the shirt, drawing a $13,659 fine.
Kittle said then that he didn’t care about the fine.
He apparently cared this year, not wanting to draw another.
Taylor Wirth of NBC Sports Bay Area reports that Kittle wore the T-shirt in Sunday’s 30-24 victory over the Cowboys when he had six receptions for 128 yards and a touchdown.
Kittle did not display the “Fuck Dallas” T-shirt in his touchdown celebration as he did in 2023 on one of his three scores.
He did seemingly tease it in a postgame interview with Melissa Stark of NBC Sports. Kittle raised the bottom of his jersey to show he had on a gray T-shirt, as if confirming he was wearing it.
Kittle also told Cowboys tight end Jake Ferguson that he “wore mine just for good luck, but I didn’t show it,” in a postgame video from Matt Lively of CBS Sports Bay Area.
Kittle said last year that he wore the shirt as a tribute to former 49ers linebacker Gary Plummer doing the same thing and that he’d “100 percent” do it again despite the likelihood of a fine.
He presumably will not have to pay the NFL a hefty fine this year since he never actually showed the undershirt.
