Alfred Collins Is Out For The Year And His Replacement Is Whoever Is Already In Australia
Kyle Shanahan said his second-year defensive tackle tore a patellar tendon at the Melbourne practice on Tuesday, which was Monday night here, and will have season-ending surgery. The two men listed under Collins at right defensive tackle on the club's own chart are both rookies, and both of them are on this week's injury report. The nearest replacement is on the other side of the world, and the coach said so out loud.
San Francisco lost its starting right defensive tackle at a practice on Tuesday morning in Melbourne, which was Monday night here.
Alfred Collins tore a patellar tendon. He is having surgery and he is out for
- Kyle Shanahan announced it a day later, and Matt Maiocco at NBC Sports Bay
Area, Nick Wagoner at ESPN and David Bonilla at 49ers Webzone all carried it Tuesday evening Pacific off the same availability.
"I'm hurting for Alfred," Shanahan said, in Bonilla's account. "It happened yesterday during a period, right before we started going against each other, and it was real unfortunate for him."
Collins went 43rd overall out of Texas in 2025, and Pro Football Reference has him playing sixteen games as a rookie and starting one. Maiocco and Bonilla both give the rest of that season as seventeen tackles, a sack and two forced fumbles. He was going to line up next to Osa Odighizuwa and play a lot.
Anyway. Here is the part a 49ers reader actually needs, with kickoff on Thursday evening Pacific.
Who plays right defensive tackle on Thursday#
The club has not said. What it has published is a depth chart, and on Wednesday morning that chart still had Alfred Collins first at right defensive tackle. It carries a stamp reading September 8, which is the day before Shanahan spoke, so the document is not wrong so much as it is asleep. (The same chart still lists Sam Okuayinonu second at left defensive end. He has been on injured reserve since September 4.)
Under Collins, in order, it lists Gracen Halton and James Thompson Jr.
The club's own roster page prints an experience column, and next to both of those names it prints the letter R. Halton is the fourth-round pick San Francisco spent this April, 107th overall, out of Oklahoma. Thompson is undrafted, out of Illinois, and made the fifty-three anyway.
Both of them are on the participation report the club's communications staff distributed on Tuesday, covering that morning's Melbourne practice. Halton is limited with an ankle. Thompson is the one man on the whole document who did not practice at all, with a hamstring.
So the two men next in line at the position are a rookie with a bad ankle and a rookie who could not go.
The coach's answer, which is the honest one#
Shanahan was asked who fills the job. His reply, via Bonilla:
"Any D-lineman is a possibility, unless you guys can name some guys we can fly here real quick."
That is a joke and it is also the whole situation. San Francisco is in Australia. The flight over was just above fifteen hours and 7,855 miles, per Bonilla. A club that loses a starter in Santa Clara on a Monday can work out four men on Tuesday and sign one on Wednesday. A club that loses a starter at AAMI Park cannot, and Shanahan is not pretending otherwise.
What San Francisco does have is a practice squad, and its roster page lists four defensive linemen on it: Vincent Anthony Jr., Kevin Givens, Ogbo Okoronkwo and Sebastian Valdez. (The whole value of a practice squad is that it is already in the building. This week it is also the only thing already in the country.) Maiocco writes that the club is likely to tap that squad for help in the opener. Bonilla names Givens and Valdez, and adds C.J. West, the second-year man already listed behind Odighizuwa on the other side of the line, to the people who absorb this.
West is the interesting one, because moving him is the only answer that does not require a rookie to be ready by Thursday.
What has not happened yet#
Collins was still filed under Active on the club's roster page on Wednesday morning, and the club's transaction page, read in the same pass, carried no injured-reserve move for him. Its newest entry was September 5. The last time that page named him at all was July 26, when the club put him on the active physically-unable-to-perform list. Wagoner reported that Collins will go on injured reserve in the near future. As of Wednesday morning the near future had not arrived, which matters only because the roster spot it opens is the spot any replacement would use.
The other one already happened. San Francisco put Sam Okuayinonu on injured reserve on September 4, in the same transaction that signed Khalid Kareem, and Wagoner has the injury as a broken foot needing surgery. Okuayinonu started twelve games last season, which is twelve of the fifteen starts in his career. The club announced before the flight left that he would not be making the trip.
Shanahan, again through Wagoner: "We've lost two D-lineman pretty much for the year after cuts and before the first game which has been a huge challenge."
The club's roster page lists nine defensive linemen under Active. One of the nine is having surgery. Of the eight who are left, its own experience column calls three of them rookies.
The Rams land the day before the game.
