Few, if any, teams in the NFL have been hit as hard as the San Francisco 49ers by the injury bug over the last two calendar years. In 2024, a number of serious injuries to key players resulted in the Niners going 6-11, and last year, while they went 12-5, players continued to drop like flies due to injury.
This season, at least thus far, hasn’t started as badly as the previous two when it has come to injuries. But things got considerably worse on Thursday during their 27-7 win over the Los Angeles Rams when standout rookie wide receiver De’Zhaun Stribling left with an ankle injury. On Sunday, news came that he will miss at least four games with a deltoid sprain in his ankle.
People have speculated that the electrical substation near the Niners’ facility is to blame for these injuries, but there doesn’t seem to be empirical evidence to support that theory. Grant Cohn of the On SI network has a simpler and more plausible explanation.
As Cohn pointed out, Stribling initially hurt his ankle earlier in Thursday’s game but was cleared to return by San Francisco’s medical staff. That may have been the reason Stribling ended up sustaining that deltoid sprain.
But Cohn wrote that this has b...