More info. on the 49ers from Beyondthebets and footballoutsiders Football Outsiders predicts that Super Bowl favorite 49ers won’t even make the playoffs
By Beyond the Bets On July 20, 2012 ....
The San Francisco 49ers are Super Bowl favorites at several Las Vegas sportbooks, the result of a steady stream of sharp and public money coming in on them.
Football Outsiders, though, doesn’t even think the 49ers will make the playoffs.
The site, which provides advanced statistical analysis of every NFL team, predicts major regression for the 49ers, who went 13-3 in 2011 and came a few muffed punts away from winning the NFC championship game.
While the franchise returns just about everybody from last season’s team and plays in a division widely considered to be the worst in the league, several factors are working against them, Football Outsiders says.
One such factor is defense and special teams play, which is generally far less consistent than offense from one year to the next.
From Football Outsiders:
“This is a problem for San Francisco because so much of their success last year came on defense and special teams,” said Aaron Schatz, editor in chief of Football Outsiders. “If we expect the offense to stay more or less the same, and maybe even add a little bit, we expect defense and special teams to be inconsistent. If you combine that with the Plexiglass principle and simple regression toward the mean, you’re left with the belief that San Francisco simply can’t go 13-3 next year or at least that it’s very unlikely.”
Schatz lays out several other reasons why the 49ers will regress in 2012 (view them here), but here’s an interesting observation that’s getting little discussion from prognosticators: The 49ers lost a league-low two players to Injured Reserve in 2011.
Josh Morgan (leg) and Will Tukuafu (wrist) were the only 49ers players to have their seasons cut short due to injury. By comparison, the Jaguars sent 28 players to IR (including 20 during the season), and two divisional foes—the Rams and Seahawks—had 15 and 13, respectively.
Football Outsiders predicts the 49ers to finish 7-9 and gives them a 39.5 percent chance of making the playoffs.
