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The 49ers couldn’t escape their Week 5 loss to the Dolphins without another injured starter. Linebacker Kwon Alexander is dealing with a potential high ankle sprain according to head coach Kyle Shanahan.
Shanahan told reporters during his Monday video conference that Alexander suffered what the team believes is a high ankle sprain, but the severity of the ailment is unknown, leaving some uncertainty about how much time the linebacker will miss.
“They’re not sure of the severity of it. It could be a minor one for whatever that means,” Shanahan said. “So, that’s why, usually if it was automatic high ankle sprain, I’d be talking about IR and stuff right now, but they told me to hold on that because they think it possibly could be a minor one. Don’t know. They’ve got to do more work today on it and we’ll have an answer on that for Wednesday.”
Alexander didn’t wind up missing any time Sunday. He played all but one snap on defense and racked up five tackles and a sack. Still, high ankle sprains are typically painful injuries that knock players out for multiple weeks. Jimmy Garoppolo missed two weeks with his and still didn’t appear to be quite right Sunday.
Injuries have been an unfortunate theme for Alexander over the last three seasons. A torn ACL in 2018 limited him to only six games. A torn pectoral cut his regular season to just eight games last year. Now he has a high ankle sprain that could wind up costing him multiple games.
This season Alexander has 30 tackles, three tackles for loss and one sack through the first five games.