Jason Verrett returned to the field for the San Francisco 49ers for the first time since 2021 against the Baltimore Ravens.
While it is a nice little story to see him back, the decision to roll him out in the middle of the game was extremely questionable. Verrett would replace Ambry Thomas who wasn't having a bad game at all. It was very head scratching to see. Verrett ended up playing five snaps, but would allow a touchdown on his final rep. The decision to play him ended up proving costly.
On Tuesday, Kyle Shanahan explained the 49ers' decision to play Verrett so suddenly against the Ravens.
“That was the plan, just to get him four-to-eight plays going in," said Shanahan. "There's a lot of different schematic things. Some guys have certain attributes that we like. We get to see a lot of it here in practice and we want to know what options we can have for certain packages and things like that.
"So, the plan going into that game, we always dress five DBs and we ended up dressing J.V. over Sammy (Womack III). We wanted to get him in there, start experimenting with a couple things. We planned on it being real short. I know our goal in the game was four-to-eight plays. I think he ended up getting five. So, just a part of some schematic things to know our options for the future.”
It's smart to want to slowly integrate Verrett into the defense given his injury history. A full workload right off the bat would be silly, but so is suddenly playing him in the middle of a crucial game. It would've been one thing if the 49ers had a lead or were doing well against the Ravens, but they clearly weren't. There's some arrogance with Shanahan and the 49ers by playing Verrett over Thomas who has been playing really well since the Bye week.
The 49ers really thought that they could play Verrett for a short stint and everything would be fine against a rolling Ravens offense. Well, that decision cost them a touchdown and the 49ers look like arrogant fools for it. Maybe next time they will consider the situation of the game before desperately trying to see if Verrett is still the 2020 player.
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