49ers Fans Are Linking Injuries to Electrical Substation Next to Practice Facility

It can be hard to watch your team take a series of tough losses and injuries. Fans often follow these teams for their whole lives, and players for their entire career, developing a sort of parasocial relationship, where they almost feel like they know them in real life. That can make them feel very protective of these players and teams, making all those losses and injuries feel almost personal.

That appears to have happened to the San Francisco 49ers during their 2025/2026 season.

Leaving fans to come up with their own theories about what could be going wrong with their team. The number one consideration? An electrical substation near the 49ers' practice facility is causing the players to be more injury-prone, thanks to the degradation of their bodies, which one theory says is caused by low-frequency electromagnetic fields.

Think it's too far-fetched to be true? Here's what medical experts have to say about these frequencies and their impacts on your body.

The 49ers moved their facilities to Levi's Stadium in 2014, according to Sporting News. There's a multi-use field located just outside the stadium, which is the field that the team regularly uses to practice on. Positioned adjacent to both those fields is the Silicon Valley Power Mission Substation, which is an electrical substation.

The Washington Post says that it's spoken to agents whose clients are worried that the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are creating health issues.

According to Healthline, there are several different types of EMFs, and some are more worrisome than others. For example, X-rays, CT scans, and gamma rays all contain EMFs, and prolonged exposure to these types of waves isn't recommended.

There seems to be little proof of what danger long-term exposure to low-frequency EMF can do to the human body, but some fans theorize that it can cause tendons to weaken, soft-tissue damage, and even collagen degradation.

There's a conspiracy theory floating around X that the substation is impacting the team's physical health. A man named Peter Cowan posted about it on the social media platform, connecting the team's injured list to the substation.

As of Jan. 16, 2026, the 49ers' injured list included eight players with injuries that ranged from turf toe to torn ACLs. However, the thing that tied all of the injuries together is the fact that all but one (a fractured ankle) were considered soft-tissue injuries.

According to Sporting News, this list isn't anything new, and the prior couple of years weren't exactly easy on the other Niners either. There have been plenty of other soft-tissue injuries knocking players out of the game, and they all seem to keep the footballers from having the successes that so many fans are hoping for.

So, does that have to do with EMFs? Or is it just the fact that football is a sport that is inherently bad for the body?

The health experts who spoke with The Washington Post seem pretty confident that the location of the substation doesn't have anything to do with the laundry list of injured players.

Whether that's enough to convince the masses of Niners fans who are tired of watching their team get hurt remains to be seen, but for now, it seems like the experts say that the substation is the least of their health worries.