San Francisco 49ers: 3 realistic goals for 2021 season
By Peter Panacy
49ers Goal No. 3: Stay Healthy
This does go without saying, but the overall context of it needs to be pointed out nonetheless.
2020 was hopefully an aberration, at least in terms of the number of injuries the 49ers suffered over the course of the year. And it’s an element that ultimately influenced Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch’s offseason plans, both in free agency and the NFL Draft. It’s also a primary reason why the Niners are shifting towards Trey Lance from Jimmy Garoppolo, the latter having missed the bulk of the last two years because of injury.
They clearly understood they couldn’t suffer more injuries like they did last season.
Anyway, there is a means to quantify just how bad injuries were for San Francisco in 2020.
Football Outsiders’ adjusted games-lost metric paints a picture of how much any given team lost by the way of player injuries, including players missing parts of games (i.e. 0.5 games missed if he exited at halftime).
Obviously enough, the 49ers suffered the worst, according to the metric. But it’s telling just how much worse the Niners were when compared to some of the NFL’s other injury-riddled squads:
- 49ers: 166.6
- Patriots: 134.8
- Eagles: 128.1
- Jets: 123.9
- Cowboys: 118.5
Not so surprisingly, the Super Bowl-winning Tampa Bay Buccaneers had the least adjusted games lost with a metric at 30.6.
The moral of the story? It helps to win games when the team is healthy.
San Francisco won’t go injury-free this season. But taking whatever measures, however they’re obtained, to prevent the sheer number of injuries from piling up again this season should go a long way towards improving the 49ers’ overall record.