It wouldn’t be a week of dialogue without somebody from the San Francisco 49ers sharing their thoughts about the substation and how it relates to injuries, would it?
In an interview with Front Office Sports, 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk was asked about the electric facility next door to the team’s practice facility, to which Juszczyk said has been a topic of conversation long before the recent viral post about the substation being the reason for the rash of injuries the 49ers have suffered:
It’s definitely
been a talking point for years. It’s one of those things that is just so hard to say because the science is not clear behind it. And I’m very much a science-driven person. And I want to see the numbers and statistics.
I mean, is it a coincidence that we’ve led the NFL in injuries for the last, like, decade? I don’t know, it very well could be. Because a lot of injuries simply come down to bad luck, bad timing, you’re in a bad position. But there’s a lot that goes into it. And if that may be some of it, I don’t know. I am very curious. I really am. I want to see what someone who truly understands that field, what they have to say about it, and just be curious to know.
The NFL downplayed the issue as recently as Friday morning. Dr. Allen Sills serves as the NFL’s Chief Medical Officer. He said, “Obviously, we’re aware of those reports. Listen, I would say we look at injury causation across the board. We consult with experts throughout sports medicine and other industries to try to understand and gain as comprehensive and understanding of injury causation as we can.”
It goes without saying that it’s disturbing if that is a conversation players are having in the locker room. There are likely dozens of reasons for the 49ers’ seemingly forever run of injuries.
However, multiple experts have weighed in, and they are all in agreement that there isn’t an impactful causation from the substation. Dr. Sills continued, highlighting how one factor is unlikely to be the reason for these injuries:
I would tell you that I’m not familiar with anything in the sports medicine literature that supports those associations, but I would also tell you that injury causation is really complex. If you think about biology and medicine, you don’t have usually one single factor that drives biological systems. And so when we think about injuury causation, whether it’s lower extremity strains or ACL or concussion, it’s equipment, it’s training, it’s prior injury history, it’s exposure, it’s play type. There’s so many things that go into that. And so, I think it’s very rare in a biological system that you’ll see one factor that really drives injury risk.
