The 49ers had a key distinction along the offensive line this past weekend.
The San Francisco 49ers cruised past the Philadelphia Eagles 42-19 on Sunday, improving to 9-3 on the season and moving within one game of the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
It was a dominant performance from the 49ers, who bounced back from a slow start to score six consecutive touchdowns in the victory, while the defense held Philadelphia to just 19 points, thanks to a 50 percent conversion rate in the redzone.
Coming into the week, the 49ers came into the week fairly healthy, as only Ray-Ray McCloud missed the game, but there were a few players who showed up on the injury report.
Among them was right guard Spencer Burford, who missed Week 12 with a knee injury and was limited for two days this past week as well.
As a result, Jon Feliciano earned the start last week, which led to questions of how the 49ers would balance the time share between the veteran and the second-year guard as Burford returned from injury.
Well, Burford ultimately started the whole game, set aside for four garbage-time snaps, indicating how the 49ers potentially view their guard rotation at the moment.
What was the reasoning behind the decision to fully stick with Burford?
Speaking to reporters on Monday, head coach Kyle Shanahan acknowledged that Burford had a great week of practice, but the 49ers were planning to take it series-by-series.
Ultimately, Burford didn’t have any setbacks and the 49ers left the rotation as-is.
“Yeah, he did. He had a real good week of practice,” Shanahan said about Burford. “We wanted to see how healthy he was during the week, and once we put all three of those days together we felt real good about his tape.”
“We weren’t by any means going in and planning to keep Jon out. We still planned on him playing some. We were just going to take it series by series. Spencer held his own, did a good job. We didn’t see any setbacks from his knee injury from the previous weeks so we just left it that way and thought he had a good game.”
However, Burford did pop up on the initial injury report this week, as head coach Kyle Shanahan revealed that the guard injured his other knee during the game.
“[OL] Spencer Burford also had a knee,” Shanahan said when breaking down the injuries from the game. “It was his other one. We’ll see how he responds this week. He still has a chance to go.”
But, the 49ers seem content moving forward with their young guard when he remains healthy, which allows for continuity along the offensive line.
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