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While Jimmy Garoppolo headlined the group of players returning to practice for the 49ers ahead of their Week 5 matchup with the Dolphins, there may not be a more important player working his way back onto the field than running back Raheem Mostert.
San Francisco has struggled to consistently churn out yards on the ground with their rushing attack since Mostert went down with a knee sprain in Week 2.
In two games with Mostert out of the lineup, 49ers’ running backs have rushed for 122 yards on 45 attempts. That’s good for an abysmal 2.7 yards per carry.
Jerick McKinnon has struggled in the run game as the lead back. He’s gone for 92 yards on 28 carries (3.3 YPC), although he has punched in a pair of scores.
Jeff Wilson Jr. hasn’t been able to lighten the load either. He’s at 1.4 yards per carry on 15 attempts. Undrafted rookie JaMycal Hasty has rushed twice for nine yards.
Mostert wasn’t having a huge year in his six quarters of play, but his ability to churn out explosive runs is unmatched in the 49ers’ backfield and gives their rushing attack a big-play element it’s sorely lacking without him.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan on Monday discussed the scuffling run game after Sunday’s loss to the Eagles. He pointed to a lack of big plays as part of the reason that once-dominant aspect of the 49ers offense has been absent.
“We’ve missed the big plays since the Jets game, which is when you lose those explosives, you’ve got to be a lot more consistent. Our consistency just has not been good,” he said. “(Sunday) night, I think it was pretty obvious. Had a few chances and you’ve just got one guy whiff and it ends up being a negative play. We’re pretty aggressive in our run game by what we do, the way we try to attack people and when you do that, if you’re not on it, you lose yards. So, you can get a lot simpler and make it easier to where you’re trying to block it for one to two yards and just see what happens. Hopefully you can wear guys down over the game, but we’ve always been pretty aggressive. When you do that and you’ve got one guy off here and there, you get some negative runs. When you don’t have an explosive to counteract that, that’s really how the results have gone the last two weeks.”
The 49ers’ offensive line struggled Sunday night, but it probably looked worse than it was because the club was missing their home run hitter in the backfield. McKinnon is a strong No. 2 back, and Wilson thrives in short yardage, but they need Mostert back to fully unlock their run game. His return would be as big as any for the 49ers when they square off against the Dolphins on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium.
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