Heading into Sunday’s NFC Championship Game, The 49ers Already down to their third-string quarterback (Brock Birdie), but after an injury to the rookie, San Francisco took a big hit from being forced to play a quarterback.
With a birdie on the side Due to an elbow injury He was hurt on the first possession of the game, turning to San Francisco fourth-stringer Josh Johnson, but then he was injured (concussion) in the third quarter, leaving the 49ers to rush their quarterback.
So who is the emergency QB? According to the Fox broadcast, it will be either Kyle Juszczyk or Christian McCaffrey. It’s starting to look more and more likely that one of those two will end up taking some snaps under center. With Johnson out, the 49ers brought Birdy back in. The Eagles went on to win 31-7 to reach Super Bowl LVII. McCaffrey threw a pass as the 49ers were often bogged down in running games late in the game.
In McCaffrey’s end, he threw four career passes, going 2 for 4 for 84 yards and a touchdown and a touchdown. He went 0 for 1 on Sunday. As for Juszczyk, he’s been in the NFL for 10 seasons and hasn’t thrown a pass, meaning the 49ers will almost certainly have to run some kind of wildcat offense if Juszczyk or McCaffrey enter the game at QB.
The crazy part about Juszczyk is that the NFC Championship wasn’t even the first game this season where he had an injury to enter the game. Back in Week 2, there were only two active quarterbacks against the 49ers Sea hawks. That was the game in which the 49ers had to turn to Jimmy Garoppolo after Trey Lance broke his ankle.
Had Garoppolo been injured in that 27-7 victory, the 49ers would have had to turn to Juszczyk. At the time, Jaszic made it clear that he had no role in playing QB.
“I told Jimmy in the locker room, ‘Hey man, don’t make me play quarterback today,'” Juszczyk said. Said following the Week 2 win. “He promised he was going to do everything he could to make sure that didn’t happen.”
