With all this chat of Brandon Aiyuk returning from his ACL injury, it almost seems like you almost might forget about San Francisco 49ers safety Malik Mustapha.<\/p>\n
Almost.<\/p>\n
Mustapha has posted some updates on social media now that he\u2019s 21 weeks post-op from his ACL surgery. Much like watching Aiyuk shoot hoops and run around, this shows that recovery seems to be progressing.<\/p>\n
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So we first get him squatting four plates (which isn\u2019t easy if your knee is 100 percent). While squats do target the quadriceps, your knees can also take some stress. It\u2019s not good form, but it can happen. Given that the risk is minimal and he\u2019s doing it with little issue, it means things are good.<\/p>\n
And then we got him running around. You might not notice this, but the first clip of him sprinting looks like he\u2019s attached to a sled or weights of sorts, and he\u2019s still bouncing around.<\/p>\n
Mustapha tore his ACL in a surprise report of sorts following the 2025 NFL draft. It was initially described as a \u201cre-injury\u201d to his knee in the 49ers\u2019 final game of the season, but later was said to be an ACL tear.<\/p>\n
Muspatha is 21 weeks post-op. Sure, this looks great, but he\u2019s not precisely getting leveled by a lineman doing dangerous acrobatics. We won\u2019t know how far along he is.<\/p>\n
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Additionally, the 49ers have a plethora of safeties, suggesting they may have anticipated the need for a backup plan. They drafted Marques Single in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft, adding him to a room that has Ji\u2019Ayir Brown, Richie Grant, Jason Pinnock, and George Odum. That\u2019s a lot of safeties.<\/p>\n
If Mustapha has a setback, it appears the 49ers prepared for such a situation. I\u2019m no doctor, so I can only speculate (feel free to offer medical opinions in the comments) but this looks more like a workout than a rehab, which is a good sign<\/p>\n
More from ninersnation.com:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malik Mustapha is 21 weeks post op and squatting some serious weight. Both he and Brandon Aiyuk are working hard to get back to the team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":63122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2294,2295,18,2296,1211,255,1713,12],"class_list":["post-63121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl","tag-acl-injury","tag-acl-surgery","tag-brandon-aiyuk","tag-george-odum","tag-jason-pinnock","tag-malik-mustapha","tag-richie-grant","tag-san-francisco-49ers"],"yoast_head":"\n