The San Francisco 49ers’ Injury Woes Seem Impossible

If you take a closer look at Barrett’s Tweet, you’ll notice that the 49ers are already being ravaged by injuries this year, and the list seems to be growing every day. 

Most notably, third-year wide receiver Ricky Pearsallhas already been ruled out for the year after it was announced that he’s set to undergo surgery on his PCL (knee).

Today, though, we’ll be rolling back the clock even further and discussing the incomprehensible levels of the Niners’ poor injury luck.

What’s Going on in San Francisco?

On Sunday morning, Ryan Paganetti, who’s spent the better part of the last decade serving as a member of analytics and coaching staffs in the NFL, shared a Tweet that I can’t get out of my head.

Using Aaron Schatz’s adjusted games lost rankings, Paganetti evaluated how severely the 49ers have been impacted by injury in each season since 2008.

Based on Schatz’s rankings, the 49ers have been among the league’s 10 most-injured teams in 12 of the last 13 seasons.

The one year they remained healthy? The 2023 season, when George Kittle, Dre Greenlaw, and Deebo Samuel all suffered injuries in the Super Bowl, as Barrett noted in the Tweet above.

It just seems impossible. 

Well, according to Paganetti, the odds of a team ranking top 10 in adjusted games lost in 12 of 13 seasons come in at roughly 1 in 124,640, aka a 0.0008-percent chance.

So, basically impossible.

What’s to blame? Is it the mysterious electrical substation that surrounds the facility? The players themselves? The training staff? Could it actually be a prolonged stroke of bad luck?

There’s no way of truly knowing, but as long as the Niners’ training room stays crowded, the substation conspiracy theories will persist, and the general narrative about the team’s inability to stay healthy will remain prevalent.

For now, 49ers fans can (potentially) find solace in knowing that the organization is taking steps to address its injury problems.

“And there will be some adjustments, some of them minor, but everything counts. And so, you try to do your absolute best to give ourself the best chance to stay healthy. The reality is, in this league people get hurt, but I'm real proud of the changes that we have made, and we'll keep doing the things we've done well. We’ll see where it ends up,” shared GM John Lynch when asked what the team is doing to combat the injury bug. 

As Lynch said, we’ll see where it ends up, but until something gives, the 49ers’ recent run in the health department will remain seemingly impossible.