SANTA CLARA http://www.seahawksauthorizedshops.com/authentic-marquise-blair-jersey , Calif. (AP) — While Jimmy Garoppolo recovered from a torn left ACL, his backups took center stage during the 49ers‘ minicamp.The 49ers coaching staff allowed Garoppolo to participate in seven-on-seven passing drills but not 11-on-11 team drills. So backup quarterbacks C.J. Beathard and Nick Mullens split time with the starters.Those two are competing to be the 49ers’ No. 2 quarterback behind Garoppolo next season. Of the two, Beathard has played particularly well this offseason, said coach Kyle Shanahan.“C.J. has had a hell of a camp,” Shanahan said Wednesday. “You can’t fully know how much better he has gotten until game time when you know they can tackle him, but C.J. has gotten more and more comfortable, more automatic. He knew the offense right when he got here and now, in his third year, he has a lot more reps than he did last year.”Beathard started five games in 2018 after Garoppolo tore his ACL against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sept. 23. In five starts, Beathard threw eight touchdown passes, seven interceptions, passed for 1,252 yards, posted a quarterback rating of 81.8 and lost all five games. During his fifth start, an 18-15 loss to the Arizona Cardinals, Beathard injured his right wrist and did not play the rest of the season.The 49ers traded up to take Beathard in the third round of the 2017 draft. Through two seasons in the NFL, he is 1-9 and his passer rating is 74.6.Beathard said he believes the quarterback competition during minicamp has brought out the best in him. “I really do,” he said. “Anytime you have competition T.J. Hockenson Jersey , especially from good players, it makes you better.”Mullens has responded to the challenge, too.“The biggest thing is just playing decisive football,” Mullens said. “How quickly can you make your decisions? How quickly can you skip a read to get to the next read because you know it’s going to be open? That’s one thing that helps me play my best. Throughout camp, I’ve just tried to be quick on my decisions, and I think it has helped.”Mullens signed with the 49ers as an undrafted free agent in 2017 and became their starting quarterback after Beathard injured his wrist in 2018. Mullens started the final eight games of the season, passing for 2,277 yards with 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He posted a quarterback rating of 90.8.Of all the quarterbacks who have started 16 or fewer games in the NFL, only Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield — the first pick of the 2018 draft — had a higher passer rating than Mullens last season. Mayfield’s rating was 93.7.“(Mullens and Beathard) have both proven they can play in this league,” Shanahan said. “We’re going to have to make a tough decision at the end of preseason to which one we want to give that No. 2 job. You don’t get to compete much during the season. There’s not enough reps. You hope Jimmy stays healthy so it’s irrelevant who’s the No. 2 guy. But the No. 2 guy does get a lot more reps in practice (than the No. 3 guy), so that’s going be very important for them.”The 49ers expect to keep all three quarterbacks on their 53-man roster for the regular season. So the competition may continue after training camp.Beathard and Mullens like competing against each other. They even golf together every weekend.“A little weekly tradition,” Mullens said. “We’re always having fun. Competition is fun.” INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The NFL’s top medical experts believe they can take the knowledge of college football physicians and trainers and the research from the NCAA to make football safer — together.Dr. Allen Sills and Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president for health and safety initiatives, spent Monday and Tuesday in Indianapolis sharing data about their findings on the prevention and treatment of injuries. It’s the most formal presentation league executives have had with college officials, and Sills and Miller hope this presentation leads to a broader conversation that includes discussions about lower-body injuries.“We’re able to show them what we’re working on and what we’re finding and how we’re applying that knowledge into the day-to-day care of professional athletes,” Sills told The Associated Press during a break. “I think we hope this is the start of even more regular interaction between the two organizations because we share the exact same goals, which is improving the health and safety of players.”The two-day meeting included participants from the NFL’s health and safety team, the NCAA’s Sport Science Institute and medical staffs from schools in each of the power five conferences. It comes amid a rapidly evolving landscape of injuries in football. Sills is the league’s chief medical officer.Over the past decade Jahlani Tavai Jersey , Miller estimates the NFL made between 50 and 60 rules changes to enhance player safety. Members of the league’s competition committee now routinely contact the medical team before considering making additional changes.Plus, as Sills and Miller have collected more data they found NFL coaches and players increasingly receptive to their recommendations and conclusions.Players, they say, are asking more questions about equipment, such as helmets. Coaches and assistant coaches, they add, have shown greater interest in how they can reduce the number of injuries at practices.“They (coaches) care about these people,” Miller said. “They care about the performance of them and they care about their long-term viability in the league, and those are all real good reasons to be open minded about how we practice, train and treat athletes as they go through an NFL training season or regular season.”The NCAA also has put a premium on player safety.It has introduced rules such as “targeting” in football, established a formal concussion protocol that includes guidelines for players returning to action after suffering a head injury and adding a section on the well-being of athletes to the governing body’s web site.But the key to success may be developing how to get the message out about additional safety measures.Until now, much of the focus publicly was on concussions: Last year’s statistics showed a 24 % decrease in the number of concussions, dropping from 281 in 2017 to 214.While Sills and Miller agree such work must continue, they also believe it’s time to specifically tackle another key issue: lower-body injuries such as sprained ankles, strained hamstrings and knee injuries, which wind up costing athletes more playing time than concussions.“We’re taking a very, I think, comprehensive approach to understanding foot Will Harris Jersey , ankle or knee injuries and the contributing aspects of that,” Miller said. “I think, we are looking at the performance of certain cleats; their traction; how easily they release from different turf surfaces; how much different turf surfaces contribute to potential injuries; how we train our athletes, the load they go through on a daily basis or through a training camp and whether that correlates with particular sprains or strains.”The league has invested more than $60 million over the past 3½ years to get those answers, which they want others to use.It’s not just injuries, either.Sills and Miller spoke Tuesday about handling emergency situations when players suffer cardiac arrests or heat illnesses, in addition to brain and spine injuries, and they back the NFL’s new mental health initiative that was announced last month.What they want most, though, is to share this information with schools that can help the sport remain strong and safe.“We know that our knowledge is expanding rapidly and there are many things we can learn from each other,” said Sills, a neurosurgeon who worked at Vanderbilt before taking the NFL’s post in March 2017. “There’s a lot of potential for collaboration around the research questions we’re both working on. For example, we have a major research effort around playing surfaces and how cleats interact with playing surfaces. We can look at 1,800 athletes in the NFL, but imagine the power of being able to expand those observations to a number of NCAA athletes. That’s going to allow you to reach conclusions a lot quicker and with more power because we’ll have more athletes.”