Always finding their way to run

49ers system accomplished at developing homegrown talent

- Craig Massei

The 49ers returned from their 10-day Eastern road trip to begin the 2021 season with a 20 record and facing an alarming question they never expected to be answering so early in the year.

Who is going to play running back?

That already was an issue before San Francisco could even get out of the middle of September as the 49ers lost explosive lead back Raheem Mostert to a season-ending knee injury in Week 1 at Detroit, then saw each of their top three remaining backs go down to injury in a five-minute span the next week during a slugfest victory at Philadelphia.

The only healthy running back San Francisco had at the end of that game was fringe veteran Trenton Cannon, who has carried the football 12 times over the last three seasons for three different teams and was picked up off the free-agent scrap heap only after the 49ers lost Mostert.

A dire situation for the San Francisco backfield? Sure.

But fear not. The 49ers know how to find running backs and they know how to develop them. And they never stop looking for ways to do it and places to find them. Who knows? Maybe they can even turn Cannon into something special under the tutelage of San Francisco coaches once they fit him into Kyle Shanahan’s outside-zone scheme.

The 49ers have done it before with just about everybody else they’ve inserted since Shanahan and his staff arrived to run the operation in 2017. Just as Shanahan has done it before with just about every running back he’s inserted into his system since he first began running an NFL offense as a coordinator with the Houston Texans in 2008.