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Kinlaw thought he had seen light at the end of the tunnel in his recovery from a devastating 2020 knee injury, but that day saw that light exposed as a mirage.

“There’s been a lot of low days like that,” Kinlaw said at his locker this week. “A lot of depression. A lot of digging myself out of a hole.”

The saga traces back to Week 15 of 2020, Kinlaw’s rookie season. The 49ers were visiting the Dallas Cowboys. Kinlaw fell and smashed his knee into the turf. The damage was extensive. Kinlaw returned for an early stretch of the 2021 season but, with his knee still hurting, managed to play in only four games.

He underwent ACL reconstruction that November and then spent all of the 2022 season fighting through recovery setbacks like the one that hit on Oct. 3.

Kinlaw, 26, is fully healthy now. Entering the 49ers’ NFC Championship Game showdown against the Detroit Lions, he’s delivered an entire NFL season without missing a single game.

Kinlaw nodded solemnly as he recalled the toil of seemingly endless rehabilitation that paved the way to this point. And there was one component of the story that Kinlaw was adamant to share. That’s when he mentioned his teammate, Arik Armstead.

“I’ve leaned on Arik a lot throughout this whole process,” Kinlaw said.

“He’s just done so much for me in life, as a human being. And that just speaks to him as a person. Just taking me under his wing, doing the things that he’s done for me. Off the field, on the field, wherever.

I think of him all the time. That’s my guy.”

Memories of a November 2021 day bring a particularly big smile to Kinlaw’s face. He was fresh off his ACL reconstruction surgery in Los Angeles.

That, unsurprisingly, was a low point. But Armstead ensured that it’d pack a positive punch, and Kinlaw keeps the veteran’s gesture with him to this day.