The story of the 2025 San Francisco 49ers is still being written. Saturday night, the 49ers will take on the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field with an NFC Championship game berth on the line. There is no two ways around it. This season will be remembered for the injuries to impactful players like Nick Bosa, Brock Purdy, George Kittle, Fred Warner, Mykel Williams, and a laundry list of others during the season.
Is there any rhyme or reason to the injuries? Is it simply bad luck? Does the team practice too hard? Is the training staff doing their job? With no clear answer to any of these questions, a new conspiracy theory about electrical substations near the practice facility has taken on a life of its own.
I had a chance to sit down with Dr. Nirav Pandya of 95.7 The Game to discuss the injuries to the players and whether there is any data suggesting the substation is contributing to the 49ers’ injuries and recovery time.
So let’s start with the obvious one, Fred Warner, who is not gonna play but was running around in practice.
Doc, tell me how surprised you are by his timeline because his ankle was facing the other way 90 days ago, against the Tampa Bay Bucs. How is this possible? Is there a hyperbolic chamber, or is this just somebody who is built a little bit differently?
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. You know, I think for a lot of people, you get to about, you know, around three months, we know pretty predictably.
The bone’s gonna be healed if there’s a ligament injury that’s gonna be healed. But how quickly athletes can get their strength, their mobility, how quickly that comes back, that varies a lot. So for most people who aren’t rehabbing, every day can be a year-long process. For a lot of athletes, it can be up to six months, but for whatever reason, just the type of athlete he is, the way he is been attacking his rehab, he’s definitely progressed, um, to where he is doing stuff out on the football field.
I would’ve expected when you saw that injury, probably more like four to five months. But clearly his body has responded really well, has been able to progress to this level. And now the real question is, is there enough time to get him ready for potentially a game next week? ‘Cause obviously now the reports are, he is not playing this weekend.
Now, the question that I think I have, and a lot of people have, is whether there is any sort of risk for further re-injury, or possibly something down the line that would complicate his future as a 49er? Like rushing back a little bit too early. Is it something that possibly he’s pushing himself a little too hard, I guess?
Yeah, no, I think the 49ers wouldn’t have progressed into doing these things if the bones, the ligaments, weren’t healed. Right. So I think there’s a pretty low likelihood that you can re-injure what was broken or injured before. The larger question is, is there any compensation that’s still there?
Is there still some muscle weakness thing that just takes time to get, you know, better? So the risk would more be, you know, number one, could there be another muscle injury and injury somewhere else? Just ’cause he’s compensating, ’cause he is not running the way that he does. Or number two, which is sometimes the more subtle thing, is you can run on the practice field, you can do all those drills, but can you have a 300-pound lineman land on it?
And I think that’s the question. It’s really hard to know because there’s no way to test that. You can’t have someone land on you in practice, be like, oh, it held up. So I think the two major considerations are is the muscle strength and flexibility there that he can be the Fred Warner, who he was.
How he was running and jumping before the injury? And then is it ready to withstand the contact that you need to play 70 80 plays in the intensity of a playoff game?
I’m picking the 49ers to move on to the NC Championship game. Do you expect him to be on some sort of snap count, or is this just, if he’s ready to go, he has to be able to play all the snaps?
I think there probably will be some sort of snap count. I mean, you take it just from a basic perspective. If you haven’t done physical activity in three to four months, even if you’re just like a regular athlete, right?
You just work out and things like that, and suddenly someone’s like, okay, now we’re gonna have you from like you’ve run a quarter mile, and now you’re gonna go run a marathon in five days. You know, like I think your body’s just not gonna perform at the level that you need, and you’re at risk for injury.
And I think the bigger consideration is that. You know, if he gets to play 70, play 80, you know, is he gonna be effective? Are there other players on the team? Because they’re more conditioned, who can be out there? So I think most likely there’ll be a restriction, but you know, honestly, a lot of it’s gonna be probably how he’s looking out there and what he’s telling the team.
Obviously, George Kittle’s devastating Achilles injury is concerning based on how late in the season it occurred and his age. What is his timeline, and when can we expect his explosiveness to return?
If you look at NFL players who have an Achilles even, and we’ll talk about Aaron Rodgers and Cam Akers, et cetera, you know, most people usually land nine to 12 months after surgery. Like, you know, you’re basically sewing the tendon together, and then you’re basically trying to get back your speed and explosiveness, so that takes a long time, especially for a football player.
The good news for Kittle is that if you look at the position that actually returns to play the best, it’s tight ends. U For me, my theory is that tight ends are probably some of the best athletes, and the better athlete you are before your injury, the more likely you’re gonna be able to kind of get back.
If he does get back, and there’s a high likelihood you will see that drop in the first season, but then in the second season, you see the statistics kind of climb back up. Now the key factor is obviously age. And you know, if you’re 22 or 23 and you tear your Achilles, the quality of that tissue theoretically is gonna be better than someone a little bit older.
Also, your body’s ability to respond to this big injury is a lot better, but with some of the newer techniques, where they’re basically fixing it, using smaller incisions and using things that are a little bit stronger. You can actually start doing the rehab a lot earlier, and that’s where you’re starting to see some players push the envelope of, hey, maybe month six.
Assuming he’s got a regular, you know, standard Achilles. Probably around nine months. So I think the possibility of him playing next year, barring some sort of crazy setbacks, is pretty high.
Now, that’s the easy way to pivot into Ricky Pearsall, who is dealing with a PCL injury. This is the second one. And there is this sentiment out there that Ricky should be pushing through this injury. Is it a matter of toughness? Doc, I’m not a doctor myself, but from the information that I’ve gathered about PCL injuries, it’s about stability, and it’s about him being able to push off, and it’s about him being able to break in and out of routes.
Is that really what’s going on? Or is this something where he can’t just say, Hey, listen, I’m gonna push through this if his knee can just give out at any time because of the ligament itself?
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that, you know, the 49ers keep saying this is a PCL injury. They’re not saying it’s knee inflammation, they’re not saying other stuff.
The PCL basically gives you stability to your knee, and if you don’t have a good PCL, imagine your shin bone just shifting back relative to your thigh bone. So you know, someone can’t will themselves to basically, oh, I’m gonna look really push through my knee being unstable. It’s hard to even wear a brace when you’re playing at that level.
Now, for a lineman, maybe they can push through it, but you have to cut, you have to pivot, you have to do agility, so if that PCL is constantly getting aggravated, it’s just hard to play. And remember, McCaffrey had that at the end of last season. And it, you know, obviously, he recovered through the offseason.
So this is absolutely, assuming this is just a PCL injury, you can’t push through it. It’s just really, really difficult because your knee’s not stable. So once again, everyone’s saying, oh, he just needs to kind of go through this and do all this other stuff.
It’s a structural injury; it’s not a pain tolerance issue.
I would be remiss in my duties without asking you. You’re a doctor, a medical doctor, someone who has degrees.
I’m just a podcaster. I’ve been completely dismissing this notion because it sounds like nonsense, and it sounds like tinfoil hat stuff. Please, please shed some light on this. And please, please, can we put to rest the whole electrical substation thing that is near the practice field?
Yeah, so a couple of things.
Number one is that there’s no real-life data that says that, you know, these kinds of electrical magnetic fields have a direct impact on. Collagen or tendon healing or et cetera in actual people, right? So maybe there’s something in a lab where you’re like exposing, you know, rats or other things to like tons of this radiation.
But in real life, there’s no study that shows this. Number two, the 49ers have practiced at that area since 1988. So they would be the most often injured team since 1988. So number two, number three. There are other athletic facilities across the world that have electrical substations near them that probably are exposed to the same amount of whatever they’re talking about. So I think that what you have to look at, when you look at 49ers injuries, you gotta look at the factors we know you’ve gotta look at prior injury, history, travel, playing on turf, you know, players playing out of position, players playing more snaps and other things who, strength conditioning, coaching, all these other things.
The electrical substation. It’s, it’s, it’s one of those things where you could say that, well, because the San Francisco 49ers team starts with an S and then they’re the most injured team that starts with an S. Is there actually a connection? Can that cause injuries, or is it just one of those things that happens to happen?
So I’m all for looking for data and studying it more and seeing if there’s an impact. But right now, it just isn’t there.
For the full conversation, click on the video below:
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