George Kittle Started And Played 30 Snaps. Luke Farrell Did Not Start And Played 46.

George Kittle started the season opener at tight end and played 30 of San Francisco's 65 offensive snaps. Luke Farrell did not start and played 46.

Both numbers are off the Playtime Percentage page of the NFL's official game book for the game, which puts Kittle at 46 percent and Farrell at 71. The third tight end, Jake Tonges, played eight snaps and 12 percent before he was carted off in the second quarter. Between them the three took 84 snaps on 65 offensive plays.

The book does not publish personnel groupings, so it will not tell you how many of those 65 plays had two tight ends on the field. It will tell you the club dressed three and used all three, and that the one it used least is the one it may not have for a while.

What San Francisco has said about Tonges is four days old and it came from the coach, not from a document.

Kyle Shanahan, after the 27-7 win at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in Pro Football Talk's rendering of his postgame availability: "It wasn't good. It's not an ACL, it's the MCL, I believe, but there's some issues with it that we've got to see how it is." Full testing waited on the flight home. No result has published since, and no reporter has put a number of weeks on it.

The club has added nothing. Its transaction log, read at 2:50 p.m. Pacific on Monday, still ends at 09/10, the day San Francisco placed Alfred Collins on injured reserve and elevated KhaDarel Hodge and Ogbo Okoronkwo. Tonges sits on the active table of the roster page, where he has sat every day since the game. The club's injury report page has a Week 2 tab, and selecting it returns the legend explaining what DNP and LP mean above an empty space where the San Francisco table goes.

Kittle played fewer than half the snaps, and he is eight months out of an Achilles repair.

He tore the tendon on January 11, in the wild-card round against Philadelphia, and came off the physically unable to perform list in August. On both practice days the Week 1 report carries a value for, he was a limited participant with no game status beside his name. Under the league's own rules, a name on that report with no designation is a club saying it expects the man to play. He played. He played 30 snaps.

That is a workload the staff chose with three healthy tight ends in the building. It has two now.

Farrell is the one whose week changes most, and he was already the busiest of the three.

His 46 offensive snaps were 16 more than the starter's. He then played 18 of San Francisco's 20 special-teams snaps, which is 90 percent and the highest special-teams snap share of any 49er in the game. Four other 49ers played 65 percent of them and nobody was above that. Add the two columns and Farrell was on the field for 64 snaps in a game his position group's starter spent 30 snaps in.

He caught both passes thrown to him, for 19 yards. Kittle was targeted five times and caught two, for 12. Farrell is on this roster to block, and 71 percent is what that job looks like on an afternoon when the offense runs 30 times for 174 yards.

Behind Kittle and Farrell there are two men and both of them are on the practice squad.

Khalil Dinkins and Brayden Willis are the only other tight ends San Francisco employs. Both were on the practice squad on Sunday afternoon and both were still there when the roster page was counted on Monday. The club can put either one on a game-day roster without signing him to the 53, which is what a standard elevation is for, and it can sign one outright if it prefers: the spot that opened when Collins went on injured reserve on September 10 has not been filled.

So the club has an open roster spot, two practice-squad tight ends, a starter on a snap count and no published answer on the third man. Four days of that has produced no transaction.

Wednesday is when something has to be written down.

Yinon Raviv's schedule at Niners Nation has San Francisco practicing Monday afternoon with no media availability attached, and the next three practices on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Shanahan's next press conference is Wednesday.

Miami comes to Levi's Stadium on Sunday at 1:25 p.m. Pacific. A Sunday kickoff means the first participation report the club owes the league follows Wednesday's practice. Whatever the imaging said about Jake Tonges's knee, Wednesday is the first day San Francisco has to put a letter next to his name.

What San Francisco has to decide by Sunday.

The club can play Miami with the two tight ends it has, or it can add a third, and adding one is cheap. A standard elevation of Khalil Dinkins or Brayden Willis costs no roster spot at all. Signing either man outright costs the spot Alfred Collins vacated on September 10, which is still open.

The case for doing nothing is not thin. Kittle and Farrell took 76 of the 84 tight end snaps in Melbourne between them and both are healthy. Kyle Juszczyk played 33 snaps at fullback and is this offense's established second body in heavy personnel, so two tight ends is a formation problem the club already knows how to solve. Tonges has not been ruled out of anything by anyone, and an MCL sprain that does not need surgery can cost two weeks. And the transaction log points the same way. San Francisco left a roster spot open for four days with four defensive linemen on injured reserve and one on the physically unable to perform list. A club that does not fill that hole on a schedule may not fill this one either.

Sources: NFL official game book, Week 1, San Francisco at Los Angeles, Playtime Percentage and Lineups pages. 49ers.com roster page, transaction log and injury report page, all read at 2:50 p.m. Pacific on Monday, September 14. Pro Football Talk on Shanahan's postgame availability. Yinon Raviv, Niners Nation, on the Week 2 practice and media schedule.