Shocking stat puts 49ers’ special-teams struggles into perspective

Shocking stat puts 49ers’ special-teams struggles into perspective originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The 49ers’ special-teams unit has been under fire for much of the 2024 NFL season. And after San Francisco’s heated theatrics in its Week 10 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the criticism won’t be going away anytime soon.

A plot graph shared Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter, by user @SFdata9ers illuminates the 49ers’ season-long struggles on special teams.

There’s no way around it: San Francisco’s Expected Points Added for special-teams snaps is the worst in the NFL by a large margin.

49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, well aware of his team’s lapses, discussed the special-teams issues with reporters on Wednesday.

“Yeah it’s — we devote a lot of meeting time and a lot of practice time,” Shanahan said about San Francisco’s special-teams unit. “We don’t double down on that, the time spent on it, because I feel like we do as much as we can. We have mixed a lot of guys in there. … I do think guys are getting better and stuff, but we’ve got to make sure that we don’t make those dumb plays where we can cause a penalty, where we can cause a turnover and those are the things that we’ve really got to clean up.”

There remains much to clean up.

49ers punter Mitch Wishnowsky ranks 32nd in the NFL with 45.2 yards per boot. Kicker Jake Moody missed three kicks — but made the walk-off game-winner — in Tampa Bay. And San Francisco doesn’t generate much success in the return game.

But, alas, Shanahan and the 49ers will continue to chip away.

“It’s real difficult,” Shanahan said about finding improvement internally. “You’ve got the choices you’ve got. You start out the year playing a lot of young guys and you think they’ll get better as the year goes, and then some of your vets get hurt and now those young guys are starters. And so, that bumps other guys up and it hurts their development when they try to do both because they needed a lot more reps. But as they get more pressure on them for offense and defense.

“Even like [running back] Jordan Mason, he was one of our best special teams players last year and he’s been our starting running back for eight of the games until last week. So all that stuff is a trickle-down effect. You try to get practice squad guys up who you think can help, but they better, one guy gets hurt and they don’t know a position, that can cost you a game too. So all that, that’s challenges everyone has with special teams.”

It is a tricky situation for the 49ers. But San Francisco has only itself to address its special teams issues.

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