Photo: Jeff Moreland/Icon Sportswire

Look, if you’ve followed along with the 2025 NFL season, you probably know what team I’m about to focus on here. If the conversation is about the cumulative effect of injuries on a team this year, that starts and ends with the 49ers.

They already knew they were going to be missing Brandon Aiyuk for much of the season, and from that point have also sustained injuries to Nick Bosa, George Kittle, Fred Warner, Ben Bartch, Brock Purdy, and Ricky Pearsall, among others. As a result, they’ve lost the most potential productivity to injury of any team in the NFL.

Most Value Lost To Injury, 2025 NFL season (through Week 13)

The value we’re measuring here is each injured player’s Total Points per game over his previous 17 games, multiplied by the number of games missed due to injury. This only counts injuries sustained since August 1.

The Walking Wounded

The Bengals have had substantially fewer total games missed to injury, but Joe Burrow’s loss alone cost them as many points as half the teams in the NFL have suffered in total this year. Without that injury they’d rank in the fortunate half of teams.

The Commanders are at the top of this list because of Jayden Daniels’ injury-plagued season. But they have also missed wide receiver Terry McLaurin, running back Austin Ekeler, safety Will Harris, and defensive end Deatrich Wise.

Kyler Murray’s injury has not affected the Cardinals’ fortunes as much as you’d think because backup Jacoby Brissett has been more than serviceable, but he still ranks among the most impactful injuries of the year by Total Points. Running back James Conner has been a favorite of Total Points for a little bit now, so his absence also looms relatively large.

Others Receiving Votes

A training camp injury to tackle Rashawn Slater started the ball rolling early for the 10th-ranked Chargers, and the hits kept coming as opposite tackle Joe Alt has dealt with multiple ailments. Los Angeles has more games missed than all but the 49ers and Bills in terms of Total Points missed.

The Lions and Bears have the most games missed due to injury in the league, but they rank just 14th and 15th respectively in Total Points missed. They’ve been fortunate to not have their biggest names go down so far this year, although the Lions’ fortunes have turned a bit recently with injuries to Sam LaPorta and Amon-Ra St. Brown. 

Dodging Raindrops

The Patriots and Rams are the most fortunate teams so far in terms of health, which sheds a little light on their strong showings this year. The five teams with the fewest Total Points missed due to injury (adding in the Browns, Eagles, and Broncos) are currently a combined 41-20, compared to 24-37 from the top 5 teams.