If you were a betting human, you’d be profitable if you followed
ESPN’s Bill Barnwell’s annual column, where he writes about teams most likely to improve. Barnwell is batting 31 for 38 with an average jump of 3.4 wins per 17 games. That’s impressive.
The San Francisco 49ers were the most popular “worst-to-first” team this offseason. That was before training camp began, and seemingly an injury a day decimated the Niners’ depth chart. The good news is that only defensive tackle Kevin Givens’s injury is believed to be severe.
So why does Barnwell believe the Niners will take a step forward this season? Mainly because this was a team that was unlucky in 2024:
While I don’t think anybody could argue the 49ers were disappointing, here’s where I come in to say that they also were quite a bit unlucky. They were the league’s most injured team, ranking 30th in offensive
adjusted games lost and 31st in defensive adjusted games lost. While you might look toward McCaffrey and Williams and suggest they’re prone to missing time, the 49ers were the fourth-healthiest team by this same metric in 2023, with much of the same core on both sides of the ball. We should see a healthier version of this roster in 2025, which would mean fewer snaps for replacement-level players and street free agents signed out of desperation.
A year that goes by where the 49ers aren’t unlucky is a surprising one. They’ve consistently been one of the most injured teams in the league under Kyle Shanahan. When that happens, backups are forced into starting roles, and those backups are pulled from special teams, and now your special teams units are full of players who weren’t on the roster two months ago. Hence, there are continuous special teams blunders.
Barnwell highlighted the 49ers’ competitiveness, noting they blew multiple games in their division. There’s no need for us to rehash those, but regression
should favor San Francisco in 2025.
Barnwell also cited fumble recoveries. The ball didn’t bounce the 49ers’ way last year, as they ranked 27th in fumble recoveries. Nick Sorensen’s defense also only forced two turnovers after the bye week. That’s the worst turnover rate on a per-drive basis in the NFL this century. So, it’s no surprise that you go from one game above .500 to six below .500 when you don’t force turnovers, but you’re giving it away at least once a game.
There were games last season where Brock Purdy was forced to throw to Ronnie Bell. The Niners are far better equipped at wide receiver this year, where that won’t be an issue—adding that Christian McCaffrey fella to the offense shouldn’t hurt, either. Plus, Year 2 of Ricky Pearsall. Defensively, Robert Saleh won’t go eight games and only force two turnovers. His defense is far too chaotic for that.
A more manageable schedule with riskier quarterbacks should go a long, long way in the Niners’ success this season:
One of the reasons the 49ers didn’t force many turnovers is the identities of the guys they faced. About 24% of pass attempts
came from backups or QBs who weren’t their team’s preferred starter. They went up against opposing No. 1s on nearly 87% of their pass attempts, the fourth-highest rate in the league. The only non-preferred options they faced were
Sam Darnold in
Week 2 and
Jacoby Brissett in
Week 4. (My belief, based on the history of how first-round picks quickly make it into the lineup despite what coaches suggest during camp, is that
J.J. McCarthy would have won the starting job in Minnesota if he had stayed healthy.)
It wasn’t just the quarterbacks, either. Everybody the 49ers played seemed tough. They faced the league’s most difficult schedule, per the FPI. Ten of their 17 outings came against teams that won at least 10 games. Even in a down season, the Niners went 4-3 against the teams that weren’t double-digit winners.
Unlike the Giants, the 49ers will catch a break this season: They face the easiest projected schedule of any team. While there’s always skepticism about strength of schedule metrics and how good they are at projecting real schedule difficulty, consider that the easiest schedule before the 2024 season belonged to the Falcons, who finished with the sixth-easiest slate. The second-easiest schedule projection belonged to the Chargers, who actually ended up playing the softest schedule and rode it to the postseason. I wouldn’t be confident that the 49ers will face the easiest schedule solely because of the FPI’s projection, but I’d be confident they’ll face a relatively easy run of opponents.
Perhaps a better question is how many wins do the 49ers improve by this season? An additional six may sound like a lot, but if you go through the schedule, even playing devil’s advocate, 12 isn’t difficult to get to.
Brock Purdy
