“We Have an Older Roster”: Fred Warner Refuses to Blame Electrical Substation for 49ers Injuries

The San Francisco 49ers have been considered one of the unluckiest teams in football for quite some time. And when they were ultimately left shorthanded against the Seattle Seahawks (41-6) in the Divisional Round of the playoffs, it became clear that their long-running theme of injuries had to be evaluated. What no one expected to find, however, was a potential link to an electrical substation.

The theory has been touted by fans and biophysicists alike, and it’s even been mentioned during official NFL broadcasts, but according to the team’s star linebacker, Fred Warner, it’s nothing more than a misguided conspiracy theory.

“There’s a lot of mixed reviews about that,” Warner prefaced when asked about the topic on the St. Brown podcast.

“I think, at the end of the day, when you look at the actual data behind is that real or not, I think it’s false. I’ll be the first to tell you, because I train year-round at our facility, and I’m not going to sit here and say that a substation was the reason why I got my ankle broken in half,” he added, refuting the theory. That was a fluke injury. Before that, I had missed one game… I’ve been super healthy for seven plus years.”

Given his string of healthy seasons before 2025, Warner was willing to jokingly suggest that, if there was any truth to the matter, then the substation was likely giving him “superpowers” and “Hulk strength” rather than health problems.

“We have had a bunch of injuries. We have an older roster. We train harder than many other teams. It’s an injury-prone league,” he added.

Nevertheless, he noted that the 49ers will be doing “a little bit more research on that” because “people are talking about it a lot.”

One of the more intriguing developments in the matter came when neurosurgeon and longevity specialist, Pleb Kruse, revealed on X (formerly known as Twitter) that the 49ers RB1, Christian McCaffrey, consulted him about this very issue during the 2024 offseason.

Suffice to say, whether the theory proves to be true or not, the idea of it has already begun to influence the way in which NFL players will think about San Francisco as a potential destination. Of course, that’s not to say that players will turn them down en masse, but it is something that will come up in future discussions.

The franchise has taken the first step by acknowledging the elephant in the room, but what remains to be seen is whether or not they will actually act upon any of the data or concerns that continue to come out. After all, it’s no easy task to just up and move an entire electrical substation, nor a football facility, meaning that something eventually has to give.