SEATTLE — It’s been a hectic week for Matthew Wright. Even for an emergency kicker.
Wright signed with the 49ers on Tuesday, after San Francisco lost starter Jake Moody to a high ankle sprain in its loss last week to the Arizona Cardinals. He then went 3 of 3 on field goals and 3 of 3 on extra points in the 49ers’ 36-24 win at Seattle on Thursday night.
“I kind of say to myself, ‘You’ve done it a million times, just don’t overthink it,’ ” Wright said.
It’s not the first time Wright has suited up for a new team on short notice. But this time he dealt with a different sort of challenge entering the week.
The fifth-year kicker, who has now played for five NFL teams, lives in Tampa, Florida, and when he got the call from his agent that the 49ers were interested, he was busy packing up his belongings before Hurricane Milton arrived.
Instead of evacuating with his wife, Kelsey – and just about everyone else in their neighborhood – Wright ended up leaving Florida a day early. First he caught a flight to the Bay Area, then traveled to Seattle with the team.
Milton, which made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday night, has killed at least eight people and knocked out power for more than 3 million.
Wright said his area “didn’t get too, too bad of stuff,” adding that his wife returned from Orlando on Thursday to take stock of the damage and begin the process of repairs.
“The floors got wet,” he said. “We’re going to need some new floors. But it’s not the worst.”
• Running back Jordan Mason sprained the AC joint in his left shoulder in the win over the Seahawks.
Mason had 73 yards on nine carries, giving him 609 yards on 114 carries through six games. Going into Sunday’s games, that leads the NFL in rushing although Derrick Henry of Baltimore is close behind with 572.
A sprained AC joint should not be a serious injury, but Coach Kyle Shanahan stopped short of saying Mason would be ready to play Oct. 20 against the Kansas City Chiefs.
“We take it as good news but that doesn’t guarantee he’ll be ready to play,” Shanahan said Friday. “It was positive that it wasn’t worse than that.”
GIANTS: Wide receiver Malik Nabers, the NFL’s leader with 35 catches, remains in the concussion protocol and will miss his second consecutive game, Coach Brian Daboll announced Friday.
Nabers remained in the third stage in the five-step protocol Thursday.
BEARS: The Chicago secondary could be down another starter against Jacksonville in London on Sunday after cornerback Tyrique Stevenson was listed as doubtful because of a calf injury picked up in practice.
TOM BRADY could join the NFL’s ownership ranks with the league’s team owners scheduled to discuss his proposed deal for part-ownership of the Las Vegas Raiders. Their meeting is Tuesday in Atlanta and those discussions could lead to an approval vote being taken that day, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.
JON GRUDEN: Former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden will get a full Nevada Supreme Court review of a lawsuit he filed against the NFL over emails leaked to the media before he resigned from the team in 2021.
The state’s highest court isn’t scheduling oral arguments but said Thursday that all seven justices will reconsider findings after a panel split 2-1 in a May 14 decision to dismiss the case. The same three justices on July 1 rejected, by the same 2-1 margin, a request from Gruden’s attorneys to reconsider.
The panel decided the league could move the civil case into arbitration that might be overseen by a defendant, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Two justices said Gruden knew when he signed a contract with the Raiders that the NFL used arbitration to resolve disputes. The dissenting justice said it would be “outrageous” for Goodell to arbitrate a dispute in which he is a named defendant.
Gruden’s lawsuit alleges that Goodell and the league pressured the Raiders to fire Gruden by leaking emails containing racist, sexist and homophobic comments that Gruden sent, when he was an on-air analyst at ESPN, about Goodell and others in the NFL.
TELEVISION: ABC will simulcast six more ESPN “Monday Night Football” games, including Monday’s AFC East matchup between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets.
The addition of the six games means ABC will air 17 this season – 14 simulcasts with ESPN (including two playoff games) and three games exclusively on ABC. The decision to simulcast more games was a joint decision between the NFL and Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC and ESPN.
The other added games are Baltimore at Tampa Bay (Oct. 21), Tampa Bay at Kansas City (Nov. 4), Houston at Dallas (Nov. 18), Baltimore at the Los Angeles Chargers (Nov. 25) and New Orleans at Green Bay (Dec. 23). The only two Mondays the rest of the regular season where ABC will not have a game are Nov. 11 and Dec. 2.
ABC had games all 18 weeks last season due to an agreement with the NFL since there was no new original fall programming due to the Hollywood writers and actors strikes.
