No, The Substation Near the Practice Field Isn't Causing The 49ers Injury Problems

Sep 09, 2026

If you’ve been watching ESPN or listening to sports radio over the summer, you might have heard some jokes and conspiracy theories about a substation in Santa Clara, California.

The San Francisco 49ers have ranked among the ten most injured teams in the NFL in eight of the last nine seasons. They finished dead last in the entire league in both 2020 and 2024.

An electrical substation next to their practice field became the explanation that took over the internet. The theory got coverage from ESPN and the Washington Post, prompted responses from team and league officials, and has its own dedicated tracking website. The team even had to hire an independent scientist to come by and confirm that their players are safe. (Sports Illustrated)

Reactions have ranged from serious concern to jokes, prompting reactions from a multitude of different sports reporters, such as Danny Kelly claiming that the substation looms larger every day, draining energy from each player that it injures.

In this article we will review the injury history that sparked the rumors, then review the facts about substations to hopefully ease the minds of anyone concerned about their 49ers.

How bad is the 49ers’ injury record?

Some football analysts use a metric called Adjusted Games Lost (AGL), developed by Football Outsiders and now tracked by FTN Fantasy. AGL counts games missed due to injury but weights them by each player’s value to the team. It is the closest thing the NFL has to a standardized injury severity score.

This is the 49ers’ AGL rank every season since Kyle Shanahan took over in 2017, where 1st means the most injured team in the league:

(FTN Fantasy, Niners Nation, Football Outsiders)

Over the five-year stretch from 2020 to 2024, the 49ers lost an estimated 262 total games to injury, ranking third in the entire NFL behind the Tennessee Titans (274) and the New Orleans Saints (266). The league average over that span was 166. (Yahoo Sports)

What is the substation theory, and who started it?

The theory traces back to a self-described “quantum biology practitioner” named Peter Cowan, who posted a thread on X laying out his hypothesis and later built a dedicated tracking site. His argument: chronic exposure to low-frequency electromagnetic fields (EMF), the invisible fields that surround anything carrying electricity, from Silicon Valley Power’s Mission Substation degrades collagen, the protein that makes up tendons and ligaments, in players who spend years training near it.

The substation sits roughly 100 yards from the 49ers’ practice facility in Santa Clara. The team has been at this Santa Clara location since the late 1980s, and the substation was there when they arrived. It was expanded and modernized around 2014, the same year Levi’s Stadium opened next door. (The Breakthrough Institute)

The theory reached ESPN, CBS Sports, Fox News, and came up on Joe Rogan’s show. 49ers tight end George Kittle recounted a veteran teammate’s observation that trees between the facility and the substation “never grew leaves,” trees the NFL later had removed. (Fox News) Podcaster Pablo Torre ran a full investigation with a science journalist. The X thread that started it all hit 22 million views.

What did the 49ers’ own investigation find?

The 49ers hired an independent scientist with more than 45 years of EMF experience to test the facility with professional equipment. General manager John Lynch called the results “a big nothing burger.” According to the team, readings were roughly 400 times below the threshold for an unsafe working environment, with exposure levels comparable to ordinary workplaces and common appliances. (ESPN)

Field strength around electrical equipment can be measurable, but it decreases with distance. More importantly, the team actually measured the fields inside the places where players spend their time, and the readings were far below recognized exposure limits. (U.S. EPA)

Does the science support any link between EMF and soft-tissue injuries?

No.

EMF has been studied for decades, mostly around cancer risk, not muscle and tendon injuries. In 2002, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified extremely low-frequency magnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” That category sounds scary but only means the evidence is limited, not that EMF has been proven to cause cancer. Coffee was also once placed in the same category before later being reclassified.

The National Cancer Institute notes that these are non-ionizing fields and, unlike X-rays, are not known to directly damage DNA or cells. No accepted biological mechanism has been established connecting low-level ambient EMF to torn hamstrings, ACLs, Achilles tendons, or other football-style soft-tissue injuries. (NCI)

The medical connection to electromagnetic fields actually sometimes runs the other way: researchers study targeted pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, or PEMF, as a treatment for certain musculoskeletal injuries. That is a deliberately generated therapeutic exposure applied to injured tissue. (PubMed)

What is driving the injuries?

One explanation might be the playing surface. Studies have found higher rates of certain lower-body injuries on artificial turf than natural grass. A UCSF study of the 2021 and 2022 NFL seasons found more lower-extremity injuries on artificial surfaces, including higher rates of serious ACL and Achilles injuries. (UCSF)

The 49ers practiced partly on artificial turf for years before replacing it with natural grass ahead of the 2025 season. (49ers)

Conditioning and workload are another obvious factor. Coach Kyle Shanahan is known to run some of the most intense practices in the NFL and has talked publicly about players returning from long offseason breaks and the increased risk of hamstring and soft-tissue injuries when conditioning drops. (Niners Nation).

Then there is the medical team side. The NFLPA’s 2026 player survey gave the 49ers training staff a C-, the lowest grade in the league. The team responded by investing roughly $9 million in training and rehab upgrades and adding three physical therapists. (SF Chronicle)

Somewhere a power engineer is getting a kick out of the fact that that millions of people suddenly care about substations, even for the wrong reason. And somewhere in Santa Clara, the 49ers are hoping that $9 million in rehab upgrades, new grass fields, and more physical therapists do what a conspiracy theory could not: keep their roster healthy for a full season.

Cheers to the 2026 season

Will

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