The following is an excerpt from Warren Sharp's 2025 Football Preview book. In addition to Warren's deep, detailed write-up on all 32 NFL teams, each chapter features page after page of full-color charts, stats, and heatmaps as well as penalty analysis from Joe Gibbs. Click here for a full FREE chapter from the 2025 Football Preview.
Penalties are an under-discussed aspect of NFL success and failure. Average teams can become playoff contenders with good discipline, and good teams can become great simply by winning the penalty battle.
Let's look at how the San Francisco 49ers performed from a penalty perspective in 2024 and where they can improve in 2025.
How Did Penalties Impact the San Francisco 49ers?
The Good
- The 49ers committed a below average 5.5 penalties per game through their first nine games, contributing to a 5-4 start to the season. Unfortunately for the Niners, it was all downhill from there.
- An above average 55% of automatic first downs via penalty surrendered by the 49ers defense occurred on less impactful first down plays. That's optimal strategy as it applies to surrendering these penalties.
The Bad
- The 49ers averaged 7.13 penalties per game on the road, ranking them eighth overall in this category.
- The 49ers ranked third for offensive holding penalties per game, with a spike in this category during the absence of Trent Williams in the second half of the 2024 season.
- The 49ers ranked 32nd in beneficial penalty yards per game. The Niners' offense didn't stress opposing defenses in a meaningful or consistent manner in 2024.
- The 49ers defense was abysmal at generating false starts and offensive holding penalties on opposing offenses, ranking 30th and 31st in each category.
Grade: D
The 49ers were the latest franchise falling victim to the Super Bowl loser's curse after their overtime loss to the Chiefs at the end of the 2023 season.
San Francisco is hoping to rebound from an injury-plagued 2024 campaign, but their reliance on veteran star players with injury histories remains an issue.
If Williams isn't available, the offensive line will be a major source of concern as it was last season in his absence.
Conventional wisdom is that the 49ers' Super Bowl window closed shut after their SBLVIII loss, and their 2024 performance certainly added credence to that theory.
However, the Niners benefit from a relatively easy schedule in 2025, and the bandwagon is getting full on this team returning to prominence.
If everything aligns perfectly, San Francisco may be able to defy history and pry open that championship window for one final run with this core group of veteran players.
There has to be skepticism, though, based on the aforementioned injury histories of players like Christian McCaffrey.
That said, there’s definitely a ton of hype around the 49ers, and capturing a Lombardi trophy that has proved elusive for this franchise in the Kyle Shanahan era would be a redemption story for the ages.
This analysis continues in the 2025 Football Preview
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