5-0 49ers Could Get Bosa, Juszczyk and Thompson Back for Monday Night — but Deebo Samuel Is Out

By Previously Staff, Previously

October 13, 2026

San Francisco beat the defending champions in Seattle without three regulars. Now Nick Bosa, Kyle Juszczyk and James Thompson Jr. each has a chance to come back for Monday Night Football against Washington — while Deebo Samuel's hamstring injury clouds the good news.

The San Francisco 49ers are 5-0, fresh off beating the defending champions on the road, and somehow the reinforcements might be arriving before the problems do. Head coach Kyle Shanahan said Monday that defensive end Nick Bosa, fullback Kyle Juszczyk and rookie defensive tackle James Thompson Jr. each has a chance to return for Monday Night Football against the Washington Commanders. None of them is a sure thing — but for a team already unbeaten, even the possibility is an ominous development for the rest of the league.

Three names, one boat

Shanahan grouped the three together in his Monday update, saying they are all in roughly the same situation: close enough that a return this week is realistic, uncertain enough that the staff will spend the week evaluating before making any calls. Niners Wire and 49ers Webzone both carried the update, and the wording matters. This is not a coach ruling players in early to play games with the opponent's preparation. It is a coach with an extra day — the Monday night kickoff buys San Francisco time — and three players trending toward the right side of questionable.

There is also a complication moving in the other direction, and it is a significant one. Wide receiver Deebo Samuel will miss some time with a hamstring injury, as NBC Sports Bay Area and 49ers Webzone reported. So even in a week framed around who might come back, the 49ers' injury ledger is not simply shrinking. It is changing shape.

Bosa is the headline

Start with the biggest name. Bosa hurt his calf in the lead-up to Week 3 and has missed three games since. Last Friday, he told NBC Sports Bay Area that he believed he was "pretty darn likely" to return against Washington — the kind of player quote that usually means the player, at least, has circled the date. Shanahan's more measured Monday version leaves the door open without promising anything, which is exactly what you would expect when a calf injury is involved. Calves have a nasty habit of punishing optimism.

What would Bosa's return mean? He is the 2022 NFL Defensive Player of the Year and a five-time Pro Bowler, the edge rusher offenses have to scheme around before they scheme around anything else. In his last healthy season, 2024, he posted 9 sacks, 24 quarterback hits and 15 tackles for loss, according to Athlon Sports' rundown of his career numbers. Those are excellent figures, and they still undersell his effect: Bosa draws double teams, and double teams create one-on-one matchups for everybody else. A defense that has been terrorizing quarterbacks without him becomes a genuinely frightening proposition with him back in the lineup on Monday night, in prime time, at home.

The other two returns matter too

Juszczyk's absence has been shorter — a knee injury suffered in Week 4 has cost him one game — but his role is almost impossible to replace by committee. The fullback position barely exists in modern offenses, except in San Francisco, where Juszczyk is a genuine chess piece: a blocker, a receiver, a motion man who tells the defense almost nothing about what is coming. Shanahan's offense is built on multiplicity, on making runs and passes look identical until the last possible moment, and nobody embodies that better than his fullback. Getting him back restores a whole branch of the playbook.

Thompson's case is the longest of the three. The rookie defensive tackle hurt his ankle in Week 2 and was originally given a three-to-six-week recovery timeline; he has now missed three games, which puts him inside the front edge of that window. Interior depth rarely makes headlines, but it is what lets a defensive front sustain pressure into the fourth quarter — and it is exactly the kind of reinforcement a contender stockpiles for the long season.

How the defense held up without them

Here is the part of the story that should worry Washington most: the 49ers did not merely survive these absences. On Sunday, they went into the home of the defending champion Seattle Seahawks and won 32-29, and the defense — the supposedly depleted defense — sacked Sam Darnold five times and forced four takeaways, two interceptions and two forced fumbles. Athlon Sports' account of the game noted that San Francisco did all of that despite also losing linebacker Dre Greenlaw to a second-half ejection. Three defensive regulars in the training room, another sent to the locker room early, and the unit still produced the game's decisive plays.

That depth is the story of the 49ers' 5-0 start. Contending teams talk about "next man up" in August; San Francisco is living it in October. It also means the staff can afford honesty about the returning players' readiness. A desperate team rushes its star edge rusher back. An unbeaten team with a defense playing like this can listen to the medical staff.

The Deebo counterweight

The Samuel news is the splash of cold water on an otherwise encouraging Monday. Through five games, Samuel had been a genuine triple threat: 16 catches for 206 yards and three touchdowns as a receiver, nine carries for 78 yards as a runner, and an average of 25.5 yards per kickoff return on special teams. That versatility is the engine of so many of Shanahan's favorite play designs, and there is no plug-and-play substitute for it. "Miss some time" is deliberately vague — hamstring timelines usually are — but even a two- or three-game absence reshapes the offensive pecking order.

It also raises the stakes on the three possible returns. If Juszczyk comes back while Samuel goes out, the offense trades one form of multiplicity for another, leaning heavier on the run game and the fullback's blocking while the receiver room sorts itself out. If Bosa and Thompson return at the same time, the defense may simply be asked to carry more of the load — which, based on Sunday in Seattle, it looks entirely capable of doing.

The calendar gives San Francisco a choice

Finally, there is the schedule, and it argues for patience. After Washington, the 49ers travel to Atlanta in Week 7, and then comes a Week 8 bye. Every coach in Shanahan's position does the same math: is one extra prime-time game worth any added risk, when a player held an extra week effectively gets two weeks of recovery around the bye? For a calf, a knee and an ankle on an unbeaten team, that is a real consideration, not a hypothetical one.

But Monday night at home, against Washington, with a chance to reach 6-0, is also exactly the kind of game stars lobby to play. Bosa has already said his piece. The evaluations run all week, the extra day helps, and by Monday night we will know which way it broke. Either way, the league's most complete team is getting healthier at the season's quarter pole — and that, more than any single return, is the headline nobody else wanted to read.