San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan should be one of the favorites for Coach of the Year. The Niners have the most conference wins in the NFC and the most divisional wins in a brutal NFC West. He’s done so without his quarterback, tight end, and All-Pro wide receiver, linebacker, and pass rusher.
Minimizing the 49ers’ injuries to their best players ignores the roster shuffling they’ve had to do on a weekly basis. Sam Okuayinonu. Tatum Bethune. Ben Bartch. Jauan Jennings. Ricky Pearsall. Renardo Green. The list goes on and on, and that doesn’t account for players who played through obvious injuries that hampered their play, like Dominick Puni.
It’s far and away the best coaching job of Shanahan’s career. What was supposed to be an “easy” schedule turned out to be 13 games against seven potential playoff teams. Heading into the bye week, the 49ers have nine wins with more than a 90 percent probability to make the postseason.
Per Sports Info Solutions, the 49ers’ injuries aren’t being exaggerated:
They already knew they were going to be missing Brandon Aiyuk for much of the season, and from that point have also sustained injuries to Nick Bosa, George Kittle, Fred Warner, Ben Bartch, Brock Purdy, and Ricky Pearsall, among others. As a result, they’ve lost the most potential productivity to injury of any team in the NFL.
The value we’re measuring here is each injured player’s Total Points per game over his previous 17 games, multiplied by the number of games missed due to injury. This only counts injuries sustained since August 1.
Sports Info Solutions also calculated the amount of “total points” missed, which is their arbitrary grade defined above. Here’s a look at the “top” five through Week 13 in total points lost:
1. 49ers, 156 points lost
2. Cardinals, 151 points lost
3. Bengals, 142 points lost
4. Commanders, 136 points lost
5. Dolphins, 123 points lost
As expected, most teams that suffer a slew of injuries are on the outside looking in of the playoffs, and their season is likely over because they lost their best players. Not Shanahan’s team.
As far as total games lost goes, only the Bills, Bears, and Lions are higher than the 49ers. The 49ers’ ability to weather the storm of injuries and still field a playoff-caliber team is what makes Shanahan, Robert Saleh, Brant Boyer, and the rest of the coaching staff’s job so impressive this season.
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