Two years ago, in the days after the 49ers completed their second straight injury season, they fired their head athletics coach and strength and conditioning coach.
These moves were predicted when general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan chatted the day after the end of a 4-12 season.
Shanahan said the injuries had been too big a deal for two years. “Lynch said there were not too many players available” and that’s something we’re looking at hard. “
Two years later, however, Shanahan and Lynch were in a news conference on Groundhog Day on Monday: it was a day after the 49ers ended a 6-10 season that ended with an NFL-high 19 players on an injured reserve , a list that included many who led their Super Bowl run in 2019.
The leaders of the 49ers have made it clear that they are not going to revamp their recently refurbished training staff, but they are going to re-examine the issue in the off-season.
“We are determined in our faith in them, but we ask that everyone should look nice,” Lynch said of the training staff. “What can we do better? We’re going to see. We will discuss each page and detail what we can do better and to improve our processes. ”
What are the reasons behind the team’s excessive amount of weakening? Of course, they had no off-season training and a shortened training camp, but it was the same conditions for 31 other teams during a season played in a pandemic.
Lynch noted that the 49ers had a long 2019 season that ended in the Super Bowl in early February. However, the Chiefs also played 19 games in 2019. And they led 14-2 in 2020 as they ended the season with the sixth-least players (six) in the injured reserve.
“They’ve figured out how to stay healthy, and they play very good football,” George Kittle said. “So I do not know. I think a lot of the injuries we sustained this year, from ACLs to high ankle sprains to broken bones – I do not really know what you can do to train to prevent such things. This is football. Things happen. We got a snowball and it fell into an avalanche. ‘
There could be a random nature of injuries, and it is possible that the 49ers experienced a season in which they were unusually snake-bitten.
However, Shanahan has admitted that they have added players with a notable history of injuries this past season.
In 2018, they signed Richard Sherman, the All-Pro cornerback, while he was training after both Achilles surgeries. In 2019, they traded for Pro Bowl pass rusher Dee Ford, whose medical record included two back surgeries.
This season, Sherman missed 11 games due to a calving issue related to one of his Achilles. And Ford missed 15 games with a back injury unavailable for the start of the 2021 season.
There are other examples outside of Sherman and Ford. But there are also players like cornerback Jason Verrett. His brilliant 13-start season came after injuries limited him to six games from 2016-2019. Verrett earned $ 910,000 base salary in 2020.
“Sometimes you have to take some risks, which we have done here in our four years,” Shanahan said. “Some have borne fruit. Some did not. I consider Jason Verrett to be a perfect one who has borne fruit. It was a hell of a thing. That does not mean you want to do it all the time, because we also see some who have done too much and we have not received the reward. ”
The NFL cliché is not true: the best ability is talent, not availability.
However, Shanahan suggested that the 49ers should place even more emphasis on durability in their ratings of players. According to spotrac.com, he referred to the fact that their 19 players on an injured reserve cost $ 78.6 million in salary cap.
“It does not mean you never take a risk again – I think that would be an excessive correction,” Shanahan said. ‘You have to take a little risk to reach the top in this league, but we also understand that you can not succeed if the (salary limit) number I just gave you continues.
“So, everything that is taken in every decision, we will ever take. And I would like to say that this has always been the case. But the more situations you go through, the more you realize what these decisions are and that the risk-reward changes a bit. ‘
The 49ers played long stretches without their No. 1 full-back (Jimmy Garoppolo), best full-back (Raheem Mostert) leading the way (Deebo Samuel) and proposed four Pro Bowl players: Kittle, Sherman, Ford and Nick Bosa .
Together, those seven players missed an average of 10.7 games this season, and many were spectators during last Sunday’s loss to the Seahawks in the final season.
“I looked out of the suite yesterday (from) and three suites looked like an All-Pro team,” Lynch said. “We need those guys on the field, not in the suite watching the game.”
Eric Branch covers the 49ers for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @Eric_Branch