Rut Roh.

49ers RB Frank Gore, the apple of many fan­tasy own­ers’ eyes went down with a bro­ken right hand dur­ing a non-contact drill on Mon­day.

Doc­tors expect the injury to take about a month to heal, which could very well keep him out of preseason.

Gore stay­ing out of the pre­sea­son is prob­a­bly for the best in the long run. Now that he is an estab­lished fan­tasy stud, I’d have to watch his pre­sea­son games with a pack of Marl­boros on my left and a bot­tle of Jame­son on my right due to his sor­did injury history.

Hence, if you either have Gore in a keeper league or have designs on tak­ing him, this is not the worst news from a fan­tasy perspective.

In the mean­time, Michael Robin­son and Mau­rice Hicks will fill in while Gore heals.

With all of the hoopla over Gore after his break­out 2006 cam­paign, one inescapable fact remains. He comes with a warn­ing label due to his injuries while with the Uni­ver­sity of Miami and so far dur­ing his 49er days.

This cur­rent prob­lem doesn’t dras­ti­cally drop his stock though. He’ll still be a first rounder. Ulti­mately, it’s nowhere the con­cern of Clin­ton Portis’s shoul­der injury from a pre­sea­son ago.

Unfor­tu­nately, peo­ple will now panic and pass on Gore per­haps due to injury scare issues. I can see own­ers doing some­thing ridicu­lous like tak­ing Larry John­son, who will spend plenty of time at the trainer’s table this sea­son or suf­fer a mighty fall in his pro­duc­tion, or Shaun Alexan­der, whose in the twi­light of his career (he may not know this yet).  

Granted the hand is a bit of a red flag because of Gore’s “fum­bling prob­lems” in 2006. The 49ers are con­sid­er­ing not cast­ing the injury so if that’s the case I would not go crazy over the situation.

As long as he doesn’t turn into Eric Dick­er­son, who once fum­bled 49 times over a four-year span, he’ll be just fine.