A new advanced effectivity metric highlights a difficult atmosphere for the San Francisco 49ers’ passing recreation through the 2025 common season. According to Next Gen Stats knowledge compiled by @NutshellSportz, San Francisco‘s talent gamers completed effectively beneath league common in producing separation.
The metric measures crew separation adjusted for common route depth (ADOT), isolating a crew’s capacity to get open relative to the place targets are anticipated to land. The 49ers completed the 12 months at -0.17 yards beneath expectation, putting them in the underside third of the NFL. This positioning places them tied with the Los Angeles Chargers and instantly behind the Philadelphia Eagles (-0.16 yards).
Historically, the narrative surrounding San Francisco’s offense focuses on schematic design creating wide-open appears to be like. However, this knowledge reveals that 49ers targets persistently operated in tighter home windows than the league baseline. Despite executing an offense closely reliant on timing and intermediate routes, the crew’s pass-catchers commonly caught passes with defenders in nearer proximity than anticipated primarily based on their particular route depths.
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This is sensible after Pro Football Focus discovered that the 49ers completed with probably the most contested catches (70) in a season for the reason that 2018 Indianapolis Colts.
The knowledge underscores the precise bodily nature of the 49ers’ receiving corps. Rather than counting on pure separation on the prime of routes to maneuver the chains, the offense operated effectively whereas persistently throwing into tight leverage. The lack of separation did not damage San Francisco’s passing assault a lot, both, after the 49ers completed fifth in passing yards with 4,157 between Brock Purdy and Mac Jones.
Now, the 49ers could have a barely totally different pass-catching group in 2026. Gone are Jauan Jennings and Kendrick Bourne. Mike Evans, Christian Kirk and 2026 rookie De’Zhaun Stribling step in alongside Ricky Pearsall at receiver, with working again Christian McCaffrey and tight ends George Kittle and Jake Tonges again for the 12 months.
This article initially appeared on Niners Wire: 49ers pass-catchers lag behind in new advanced separation metric