During the [49ers](https://www.ninersnation.com/)’ bad vibes offseason last year, I kept telling myself and others that there was no way what happened to the team in 2020 could happen again in 2024.
Guess what? It happened again.
[FTN Fantasy’s Aaron Schatz](https://ftnfantasy.com/nfl/2024-agl-49ers-get-smacked-down-by-injuries) published the adjusted games lost (AGL) data for the 2024 season on Monday, and the results make for grim, if predictable reading.
AGL is a metric that measures the aggregate impact of injuries on a given team in a given season.
Unsurprisingly after a year in which they were down several starters for long periods of the campaign, the 49ers finished 32nd in AGL with 141.2.
That is a huge change from 2023, when the 49ers had the fourth-best AGL in the league with 34.5. Injuries weren’t the sole problem for San Francisco in 2024, but over 100 additional AGL goes a long way to explaining why the 49ers went from the precipice of a Super Bowl title to finishing 6-11.
Diving deeper into the numbers, Schatz reveals the 49ers finished with 32.2 AGL at running back, the second-highest number of all-time. Given that Christian McCaffrey missed most of the season and Jordan Mason and Isaac Guerendo both got hurt in a year Elijah Mitchell missed entirely, that too is of little surprise.
But there were also other areas in which the 49ers were hit extremely hard, as Schatz explains:
> But it wasn’t just running back for the 49ers. They were also high in AGL at defensive back, defensive line, linebacker, and wide receiver. The 49ers ranked 31st in offensive AGL and 30th in defensive AGL.
Essentially, the 49ers were injured everywhere. Their total AGL wasn’t quite as bad as in 2020 (161.6), but their presence at the bottom of the pile in this metric hammers home the point that, while the 49ers absolutely have work to do this offseason to put the team in position to return to Super Bowl contention, the main thing separating them from a playoff berth in 2024 was health.
If they can be at least just a little bit closer to the middle of the pack in terms of injury luck in 2025, then the 49ers will be a decent position to a rebound to the kind of performance levels their roster has consistently proven capable of producing.