SANTA CLARA, Calif. - The 49ers are walking into training camp with a long injury list, a lot of noise around their practice site and, for now, a roster that still has enough high-end talent to make this feel like a team worth watching.
That’s the tension at the heart of camp right now. On one side, Thursday brought more limited participation and more sideline sightings.
On the other, Brock Purdy and Christian McCaffrey were both on the field and both looked sharp. In a camp defined by absences, that mattered.
A few familiar names were not in full action Thursday. Mike Evans stood off to the side with his arms folded.
Christian Kirk was tossing a football in the air. George Kittle was cheering on teammates away from the work.
Rookie receiver De’Zhaun Stribling wore a helmet but did not take part in the 11-on-11 portion of practice. That was still an improvement from Wednesday, when 20 players didn’t participate at all.
Nick Bosa was also sidelined, though he wasn’t easy to spot during Thursday’s workout. The backdrop of the practice fields - and the nearby electrical substation theories that have circulated around the team - remains part of the conversation, even if the 49ers have looked into it and found no evidence that the location is a concern.
Scientists have shot down those theories, and the team has not found anything suggesting it should worry about where it practices or plays home games. Levi’s Stadium sits behind the practice fields.
The injury chatter is loud because the calendar is still far from Week 1, with the season opener against the Rams in Australia nearly a month away. But Thursday also served as a reminder that San Francisco still has real star power when its best players are available. Purdy and McCaffrey both looked sharp, and that matters because the 49ers have already shown they can survive stretches like this.
Last season, they absorbed a wave of injuries and still won 12 games and reached the divisional round. McCaffrey played a full season, Trent Williams gave them 16 games at left tackle, and Purdy missed eight games because of a toe injury. Even so, the team kept rolling.
Purdy is the reason the 49ers believe they can keep doing that. He’s the player who can steady things when the roster gets thin, and Thursday offered another look at why San Francisco handed him a five-year, $265 million contract extension last year.
He hit a handful of wow throws and connected on several deep balls to unheralded receivers KhaDarel Hodge and Malik Turner. He also worked the middle of the field with Deebo Samuel Sr., who recently returned after spending 2025 with the Commanders.
New 49ers defensive coordinator Raheem Morris has already given Purdy a nickname: the “Layer King.” The label fits the way Purdy places the ball in the right spots, and it also says plenty about how the team views him internally.
If he keeps elevating the players around him while the injury situation sorts itself out, Purdy could push himself into the MVP conversation this season. That said, it’s still August, and there’s time for some of these sidelined players to return before the opener. Evans and Kirk have a chance to be back by Week 1, while Kittle is working his way back from an Achilles injury and could return later in the season.
Mac Jones, who filled in well for Purdy last season, offered another honest snapshot of the roster when he caught himself after saying there are a lot of “old” players on the team.
He wasn’t wrong. This is one of the league’s oldest teams, with several of its top players on the wrong side of 30: Williams, McCaffrey, Evans, Kittle and fullback Kyle Juszczyk.
Fred Warner turns 30 in November. That brings experience and production, but it also brings more uncertainty.
Injuries happen more often. Decline eventually shows up.
Sometimes both arrive at once.
That’s part of why this group feels like it’s operating on a shorter runway, even if the 49ers keep finding ways to stay in the mix. They’ve been there before, and they’re there again.
One other notable development: head coach Kyle Shanahan has not been as hands-on in practice since sustaining significant injuries in a car accident last month. During 11-on-11 work, his coaches have been running the show while he stands farther away than usual. Players, including Jones, have noticed Shanahan gradually getting closer to the action, though it will take time before he’s back to running practice the way he normally would.
Jones said he and the offense have been pleased with the way offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak has handled things since camp opened.
And in the middle of all the injury talk and camp noise, Jones had one more detail worth noting: he likes to call Stribling the “Flyin’ Hawaiian” because of the rookie’s athleticism and because he’s from Hawaii.
The media room even had Hawaiian pizza afterward. A small, strange, fitting finish to a camp visit that kept circling back to the same idea: the 49ers are banged up, but they’re not out of the picture.
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