Former Colts wide receiver Austin Collie has visited with another team as he tries to continue a career that’s been interrupted by injuries over the last three years.
Collie visited with the Patriots in New England earlier this week and Mike Garafolo of USA Today reports that Collie is working out for the 49ers in San Francisco on Thursday. The 49ers suffered a blow to their receiving corps this spring when Michael Crabtree was lost to an Achilles injury and they are also unsure of when Mario Manningham will be back to full speed after he tore his ACL last season.
That would make a healthy Collie a useful piece for the 49ers, but health is hardly a given. Collie played 16 games in 2011, but he missed 15 games last season and 10 games in 2010 because of a series of concussions and a ruptured patellar tendon in his knee. He’s cleared to return to work on both fronts, but it’s a lot of medical baggage for any player to carry when competing with players lacking serious red flags of their own.
Collie was productive with Indianapolis, however, and he’d be a low-cost flier for a team hoping to improve the secondary rungs of their depth chart at receiver.