The San Francisco 49ers were again hit hard by injuries to several top players this season, and the team wants to figure out why, even by investigating an electrical substation next door to their practice facility.
The team’s practice field in Santa Clara, Calif., is conveniently located next to Levi’s Stadium, but it’s also adjacent to the Silicon Valley Power Mission Substation. The team has been practicing there since 1988, prior to the team winning back-to-back Super Bowls with Joe Montana and another in the 1994 season with Steve Young. The power plant has been there since 1986, but was expanded in 2014.
The 49ers have struggled with injuries in recent seasons, with fantasy football website Rotowire ranking them fourth worst in the league in injuries in both 2025 and 2024.
This season the 49ers lost some of their best players to injury: Brock Purdy in Week 1 (turf toe), Nick Bosa in Week 3 (ACL), Fred Warner in Week 6 (fractured ankle), rookie defensive end Mykel Williams in Week 9 (ACL, meniscus) and George Kittle in the divisional-round of the playoffs (torn Achilles). Former first-round draft pick Ricky Pearsall missed nearly half the season with myriad ailments. And these were just some of the injuries the team suffered.
All the injuries, not to mention a powerful Seattle Seahawks team, ended the 49ers’ season on Saturday in a 41-6 rout, the worst loss of the Kyle Shanahan era.
Can electromagnetic waves increase the risk of injury? Some might scoff at the idea, but 49ers general manager John Lynch isn’t dismissing it just yet — at least not publicly. On Wednesday, during the season’s wrap-up media sessions for Lynch and Shanahan, the substation question came up from a reporter.
“Because it deals with, allegedly, the health and safety of our players, I think you have to look into everything,” Lynch answered. “So, our guys have been — we’ve been reaching out to anyone and everyone to see, does a study exist other than a guy sticking an apparatus underneath the fence and coming up with a number that I have no idea what that means? That’s what we know exists. We’ve heard that debunked.”
Conspiracy theories around the substation have grown on social media in recent weeks, while some experts have pushed back.
Frank de Vocht, a professor of epidemiology and public health at Bristol Medical School in England, told The Washington Post that it was “nonsense.” Hans Kromhout, a Utrecht University professor of exposure assessment and occupational hygiene, also told the Post that it’s “quite unlikely” that EMFs — the invisible electricity from power lines and other electrical equipment — could cause the kinds of tendon and ligament injuries that have plagued the 49ers for years.
Still, the theories have continued, even getting to the point where 49ers like Kendrick Bourne and Kittle began openly wondering about the substation, and former 49er Delanie Walker stating his belief that it causes cancer.
“The health and safety of our players is of the utmost priority,” Lynch said. “We pour into it. Our ownership, (CEO) Jed (York) is tremendous in terms of resources and we’ll always be cognizant of things. I know that a lot of games have been won at this facility since it opened. We aren’t going to turn a blind eye. We’ll look into everything.”