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Aaron Banks Out 3 Weeks with Turf Toe

While Banks is out, veteran backup journeyman Jon Feliciano will fill in at left guard. And he has starting experience, which is nice. But he's no Banks. Not even close.
Grant Cohn|
Aaron Banks Out 3 Weeks with Turf Toe
Aaron Banks Out 3 Weeks with Turf Toe

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San Francisco 49ers

More bad news for the 49ers.

In addition to losing three games in a row, the 49ers now have lost starting left guard Aaron Banks for three weeks, because he has turf toe according to head coach Kyle Shanahan. Meaning Banks will miss the next two games, because this week is a bye for the 49ers. Shanahan discussed the injury Monday on a conference call and wasn't sure when exactly it happened in the 49ers' loss to the Bengals, but was relatively sure the injury occurred near the end of the game.

While Banks is out, veteran backup journeyman Jon Feliciano will fill in at left guard. And he has starting experience, which is nice. But he's no Banks. Not even close.

Banks is the 49ers' second-best offensive lineman after Trent Williams. The two of them form a formidable left side of the offensive line, which is where the 49ers have their most success running the ball. A combination block of Williams and Banks can move even the best defensive linemen out of the hole.

But once the 49ers lose one of them, their running game suffers tremendously. Because the rest of the offensive line is just ordinary. Center Jake Brendel is decent, right guard Spencer Burford is OK and right tackle Colton McKivitz is Colton McKivitz.

It will be interesting to see how the 49ers perform on offense without Banks. Because when the offense was fully healthy earlier this season, it was elite. But as soon as it lost a couple good players, it fell apart.

Can the 49ers overcome the loss of Banks?

Stay tuned.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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