SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Did oft-injured Reggie Bush come out of Thursday night’s 20-3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks healthy?
“Yeah,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Finally.”
You thought you were frustrated with Bush in his first season with the San Francisco 49ers? The 10th-year veteran running back was griping even more. So yeah, coming out of the 49ers’ most recent game unscathed is a step in the right direction for Bush, literally and figuratively, after he strained his left calf on his second-ever carry as a member of the team in the season opener.
He re-aggravated the injury at the New York Giants in Week 5 and missed the following game against the Baltimore Ravens.
“It’s been frustrating, obviously,” Bush said on Tuesday. “Just not being out there on the football field and dealing with the calf muscle and just working through constant rehab and wanting to be out there, it’s been definitely tough.
“So I was just excited to be out there and be able to finish the game healthy.”
With starting running back Carlos Hyde dinged up -- he told CBS Sports he had a stress fracture in his left foot before the game -- Bush had four carries for 21 yards, caught three passes for 13 yards, had one punt return for nine yards and had another fair catch.
But he had a key drop on 3rd and 7 on the 49ers’ first series that, had he been able to haul in Colin Kaepernick's pass, would have been a first down. Was it rust?
“We just didn’t connect,” Bush said. “I could have caught that one-handed if I had to but, yeah, that’s definitely a play I wish I had back.
“Kaep came up to me after the play and said, ‘I’ve got to get you a better ball,’ and in my head the whole time I’m thinking, ‘I should have caught that.’ So it’s just two playmakers [who’ve] just got to find a better way to make that happen on third down.”
For now, though, Bush, who has 28 rushing yards on eight carries and four catches on nine targets for 19 yards in four games, is as healthy as he’s felt since training camp, when coach Jim Tomsula held him out as a precaution to keep him fit.
“The practice environment, you kind of control the environment,” Bush said. “You’re not being tackled, you’re not being hit, you can kind of gauge, go at your own speed.
“Once you get out on the football field on Sundays, it’s another level. And taking hits, and being put in those situations, it’s different and it’s a different feel.”