Nobody touched him
That is the part that stings. No contact, no tackle, no helmet buried in the ankle. De’Zhaun Stribling simply landed wrong in the second quarter on Thursday in Australia and never came back out.
NFL Network has the diagnosis: a deltoid ligament sprain in the left ankle. The San Francisco 49ers rookie is looking at a month minimum. Possibly longer. As of Sunday morning, surgery had still not been ruled out.
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Shanahan’s Thursday-night optimism did not survive the scans
Kyle Shanahan held the line after the game. The Achilles was intact, he said, and everything else would have to wait for imaging.
The imaging came back. It did not help.
San Francisco won the opener anyway, 27-7 over the Los Angeles Rams. Good night on the scoreboard, bad night in the training room.
A 33rd overall pick stuck in a boot
Stribling was not a flier. The 49ers spent the first pick of the second round on him in the 2026 draft, 33rd overall, after a productive run at Ole Miss. The 23-year-old, born in Hawaii, had played his way into real snaps through camp by making the coaching staff pay attention.
Four games, minimum. For a receiver whose whole job right now is building timing with his quarterback, four games is a long stretch to spend on the sideline in a walking boot while the rest of the room takes those reps instead.
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