New data confirms a painful truth about injuries 49ers fans know too well

The San Francisco 49ers' 2025 campaign will ultimately be remembered for two things: injuries and head coach Kyle Shanahan's ability to navigate his team through those injuries en route to the playoffs.

Naturally, though, one can fairly ask how the Niners would've fared if injuries hadn't played such a significant role.

It's no secret San Francisco spent more on players on injured lists throughout the bulk of 2025 than any other team, and the margin wasn't even close until the final four weeks of the regular season.

While eventually surpassed by other banged-up teams like the Arizona Cardinals and Washington Commanders, the 49ers nevertheless survived those injuries and made it all the way to the divisional round of the postseason.

But, one of the biggest differences and "what could have been" X-factors isn't the number of injuries, rather which key players suffered them.

And one league analytics site managed to put that into perspective.

New data reveals how many points 49ers lost because of injuries

There are several outlets that have calculated games missed by injured players, such as the now-defunct Football Outsiders' aggregate games lost (AGL) metric.

Sports Info Solutions, however, dove deeper and looked beyond player games missed -- the Niners had the seventh most in the NFL with 262 -- and elected to calculate total points missed in an attempt to assign value to the respective importance of injured players.

For example, one game missed by All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner is far more impactful than multiple games missed by rookie linebacker Nick Martin's concussion.

Interestingly enough, San Francisco wasn't tops in the missed-points metric either, but it did crack the top three.

Top 10 most-impacted teams by points lost

And, of all the teams that made the playoffs, the 49ers ranked No. 1 as most impacted by points missed because of injuries during the regular season.

Impact stars like Warner, defensive ends Nick Bosa and Mykel Williams, wide receivers Brandon Aiyuk and Ricky Pearsall, quarterback Brock Purdy and tight end George Kittle missed either massive chunks of the year, or in Aiyuk's case, all of it.

So, despite the Niners still managing 12 wins and a Wild Card berth, one can fairly wonder if the win total would have been a game or two better if the injury luck had been on their side just a little bit more.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway, though, is it's pretty miraculous how well San Francisco performed despite the injury rash.

Hat tip to Niners Wire's Mike Masala for the find.