The San Francisco 49ers operate in a league of their own when it comes to impressive performances this season. Beating the Chicago Bears on Sunday Night Football was symptomatic of what Kyle Shanahan has done all season long: Adapt, adjust, and overcome. As a result the 49ers are achieving what no other team has been able to in 2025, and their 12-4 record is almost incomprehensible based on everything we understand about the NFL. Shanahan’s Coach of the Year case gets stronger by the week.
This has been a year where a lot of top teams have had the freedom to take a mulligan. The Bengals were without Joe Burrow for much of the season, the Ravens have been coping with on-and-off injuries to Lamar Jackson, the injury-wracked Lions sent 14 players to IR this year, the Colts lost Daniel Jones, the Packers had Micah Parsons taken from them. All justifiable reasons why they took a step back, and reason to believe they can return to prominence in 2026. The 49ers, however, have faced every bit of the same adversity and persevered, using a masterclass in coaching, scheming, and system to thrive where others have failed.
It’s been inherently easy to ignore the mountain of devastating injuries the 49ers have, largely because they never took a step back. A total of eight starters from their Week 1 depth chart are currently out, with difference makers like Fred Warner, Nick Bosa, George Kittle, and Brandon Aiyuk all missing substantial time this season. That’s before we talk about this being a team who lost Brock Purdy for eight weeks, and still found a way to go 5-3 over that stretch with Mac Jones under center. In the win over the Bears on Sunday Night Football, the Niners also didn’t have Trent Williams or George Kittle, and still beat an elite conference foe.
The zombie kings of the NFL, the biggest mistake you can make when it comes to the 49ers is counting them out or assuming they’re dead, because they will find a way to pop back up, and jump scare you with the attack you never saw coming. The heart of it all is their staggering, tremendous offense.
Superficially this offense might not seem that impressive. The team ranks 8th in the NFL in points scored, which is fine — but not elite. They’re 7th in total yardage, 22nd in turnovers, and damn near last in the league in rushing yards per attempt, sitting at 30th. Take those numbers in isolation and the assumption this was an eight or nine win team at best, not a juggernaut with the potential of being the No. 1 seed in the NFC, while coming out of football’s toughest division.
The story of the Niners offense isn’t those peaks and valleys, but the vast swatch of “excellent” in almost every area. Across 21 key statistical markers ranking from yards, to length of drive, there are only five where San Francisco ranks outside the Top 10 in the NFL. To put this in context the Seahawks, who have the No. 1 offense in the NFL rank outside the Top 10 in 12 different markers, while the No. 2 ranked Rams have six.
Everything about this offense comes down to one simple factor: Scoring.
San Francisco leads the NFL with 49.4% of their offensive drives ending in a score. It’s extremely difficult to meaningfully stop them from putting something on the board whenever their touch the ball. Meanwhile on defense they are allowing scores on 38.9% of drives, which isn’t elite — but this 10.5% delta is all it takes to ensure the 49ers are in every single game, and always put themselves in a position to win.
We can boil down and over-analyze metrics until the cows come home, but you win if you’re scoring more often than you’re being scored on — it’s really that simple.
The most impressive element to this team is that San Francisco never abandoned its identity, or overcorrected with mounting injuries. Instead of taking an axe to the offense and defense, Kyle Shanahan and his coordinators made dozens of small adjustments with scalpel-like precision, and never wavered. Christian McCaffrey has carried the ball over 300 times this year in spite of wavering per-rush success, while Brock Purdy has been asked to play the exact same way, but the average depth of target from his receivers has been condensed very slightly, putting a premium on moving the ball over explosive plays. It’s a formula that’s just working, despite all the odds, and in the face of it making very little sense how the Niners are still this good with so many profound players missing.
The Niners might not be the “best” team in the NFL when we operate in broad, objective terms — but they’re devastatingly efficient. This is a team that constantly runs its own race, waiting for their opponents to make a mistake so they can sneak past them — like a veteran distance runner preying on a youngster who goes too hard out of the gate.
Overlook the San Francisco 49ers at your peril, because there’s something special about this team — and there’s absolutely no reason they can’t win it all in a year where so little makes sense.
