Connor Colby Rotated With The Backups At Both Guard Spots

Connor Colby rotated with the backups at both guard spots on Thursday. Robert Jones took the first-team left guard reps for a second straight day. That is Rohan Chakravarthi at Niners Nation, posted at 3:15 p.m. PT and crediting Nick Wagoner for the Colby detail.

The injury explanation did not improve, and the alignment did not change back. Wednesday's notebook reported Jones with the ones for the first time, and reported Chris Foerster saying the staff had wanted to keep moving Colby around while the concussion protocol on Carver Willis and an undisclosed injury to Brett Toth limited that plan. Neither Willis nor Toth is among Thursday's returns. The interior was no healthier, and Jones kept the job anyway.

Foerster's Wednesday answer is worth reading in full, because this site has leaned on a compressed version of it. Asked whether he was giving Jones a run at left guard, he said the plan predated the injuries:

"The plan was, before we finished the last one, was give him some left guard work, see him against different people. I wanted to give Connor some work at right guard and I was going to split Carver and Rob at the left guard spot. That was the plan. Carver is in concussion protocol. Then Toth gets hurt, so there's just some options. I still let Rob get that role."

The injuries did not put Jones at left guard. They removed the other half of a rotation Foerster had already decided to run, and cost him the wider interior look he wanted. "I was going to do a lot more interior-wise, so it wouldn't just look like it was flipping the two guys, but it didn't work out with the injuries."

So the falsifier this site wrote down may be testing the wrong thing. The call filed Wednesday says Colby starts at left guard in Melbourne on September 10, and names its own falsifier as Jones holding the first-team reps once Willis and Toth are back. That condition has not been met, because they are not back. But it was built on the premise that the absences produced the alignment, and Foerster's own words do not support that premise. A test that waits for two men to get healthy will not detect a decision that was made before they got hurt.

The call stays as filed, because a published call is not rewritten on a Thursday. What is owed in public is that its trigger reads weaker than it did on Wednesday. A second open call, from July 27, says the same thing about Colby and names a different falsifier: Jones opening the August 13 preseason game against Tennessee with the starters. That one is eight days out and is now the live test.

The other thing Foerster said about Colby, on the same afternoon, was not about injuries at all. Asked to compare his development to Dominick Puni's, he said Colby had made great strides in the off-season and looked like he had taken a big step, and then: "Now we're getting back to some live work and even though it has improved, some of those same holes are still there. Some of the things that he struggled with a year ago are coming back, not as bad as they were, but still not the consistency that we'd like to see."

That is the coach saying the incumbent regresses in pads. It ran a day before the incumbent spent a practice with the twos.

Four players came back, and two accounts disagree about how far. Wagoner has De'Zhaun Stribling, Dre Greenlaw and Osa Odighizuwa back on a limited basis and being eased in, with Sam Okuayinonu fine after being shaken up Wednesday. Grant Cohn, who was at the session, has Greenlaw missing his second straight practice in pads taking mental reps, and has Stribling warming up with the receivers and then rehabbing with the trainers rather than taking part in one-on-ones or team work. Cohn also has Nick Bosa missing a second straight day and not present at all.

Both are published, neither is a relay, and this notebook cannot settle it. The distinction is not cosmetic: "limited" and "did not participate" are different tracker entries, and Stribling holds at 7 here on the stricter reading. Nick Zakelj, elbow, is the only name Wagoner records as new on the injury report, and the injury dates to Wednesday.

Brock Purdy went 11 of 14. Wagoner charted it, one day after charting him at 13 of 14, with two of the throws perfectly placed deep balls that would have been touchdowns, to KhaDarel Hodge and Malik Turner, plus a ball fit to Deebo Samuel over the middle against Deommodore Lenoir's coverage. Cohn, independently, has two deep touchdown throws and no interceptions, and counts one interception for Purdy in all of camp. Raheem Morris has spent more than a week looking at this from the other sideline.

"Today he got fired up, which was cool, which was fun, which is competitive," Morris said. "And when he does those things, it just makes the team go."

Gracen Halton climbed, and the rep that moved him was against Colby. The rookie defensive tackle, out from Day 2 with a knee bone bruise that never got a timeline, practiced for a second straight day. Wagoner writes that he has been a dominant force in pass rush drills and has shown more juice than any interior rusher on this roster other than Odighizuwa, which is a comparison against a 10 rather than an adjective. Cohn supplies the specific: Halton beat Colby cleanly with a push-pull move. Halton moves 6 to 7 and was inside the projected 53 before it, with Ogbo Okoronkwo at 5 the next man behind him.

Nobody reported a kick return, for the second straight practice. This site made a public call Wednesday morning off the $250,000 kick-return incentive in Deebo Samuel's contract. Neither Wagoner's Thursday file nor Cohn's account names a return period, and Cohn has Samuel taking three carries at running back instead. Two practices, no return work reported by anybody, logged on the days it is missing and not only on the days it helps.

The rest. Mike Evans (quad) did not practice and did side work including running, and Wagoner writes that he looks likely to return relatively soon without the club rushing him. Stribling was in uniform before the session, per Matt Barrows. The club's transaction log, re-pulled at 3:20 p.m., still has Thursday's 9:46 a.m. Kion Smith signing and Colton Dowell waiver as its newest entry, and that move is covered separately. Counted in a browser the same minute, the roster holds 88 active and three on Active/PUP, which is 90 against a ceiling of 90 once Isaac Alarcon's exemption is applied.

Friday is a walk-through with no media present, and the team is back on the field Saturday. So the earliest anyone can report a third straight day of Jones with the first team is two days from now, and the preseason opener against Tennessee is a week after that.

On the tracker. Halton 6 to 7. Kion Smith enters at 2, below the line. Stribling holds at 7 and does not climb back, and Cohn's account is now a second reason rather than only the rule that a limited session does not restore a drop. Odighizuwa's contested flag comes off. Greenlaw is flagged contested on the Wagoner and Cohn disagreement. One in, one grade up, and nobody crossed the cut line for a sixth straight day.

Sources. Rohan Chakravarthi, Niners Nation, August 6, page-stamped 3:15 p.m. PDT, read in a browser, for the first-team left guard reps and Colby with the backups at both spots, which he credits to Wagoner. Nick Wagoner's continuously updated 49ers camp file at ESPN, the Thursday August 6 entry, page-stamped 4:05 p.m. ET and read in a browser, for the returns, the injury report, Purdy's completion line, the Morris quotation, Halton and Evans. That file carries no left guard note of any kind, so Chakravarthi's attribution is to Wagoner elsewhere and not to the camp file. Grant Cohn, Sports Illustrated, August 6, read in a browser, for Bosa, for the Greenlaw and Stribling accounts, for Halton beating Colby and for Samuel's carries; Cohn writes from the facility and says so. The club transcript of Foerster's Wednesday availability, 49ers Webzone site staff, published August 5 at 2:17 p.m., read in a browser, for both Foerster quotations. Pro Football Talk, August 6, 1:27 p.m., for the four returns. David Bonilla, 49ers Webzone, August 6, for Matt Barrows' pre-practice post. The 49ers' official transaction log and roster page, both read and counted in a browser August 6 at 3:20 p.m. PT. Gracen Halton's jersey number confirmed at 93 on the club's own roster page. Nobody from this site was at practice or in the building.