49ers Must Sign Tom Brady to Break QB Injury Curse

Stop me if you've heard this one before-- the San Francisco 49ers' promising season was brought to a crashing halt by an injury to their quarterback. If you have watched NFL football over the last five years then you would have heard that one before. Four of the Niners' last five seasons have featured a serious injury to their starting quarterback, and the one year the starter remained healthy throughout led to a Super Bowl appearance.

It is easy, and perhaps fair to an extent, to chalk it all up to Jimmy Garoppolo's glass bones and paper skin. Durability has proven a great concern for the QB after he took on full-time starting duties in 2017. However, this season's tragic comedy of errors proves that Kyle Shanahan is simply a cursed head coach who isn't going to get a healthy quarterback no matter how much he wants it. Trey Lance broke his leg. Garoppolo broke his foot. With everything on the line in the NFC Championship Game, Brock Purdy suffered a UCL injury on the first drive of the game. Then his replacement, Josh Johnson, exited with a concussion.

An already-unlucky season turned even unluckier over and over again until we all were wondering why the Niners didn't have their fullback playing quarterback. You can't script a worse series of events for San Francisco. And it was merely the latest entry in their journal of misfortune.

It is clear Shanahan and the franchise must go to a higher power to break this curse. They must pursue Tom Brady with all their might. It's their only chance of defeating the Injury Gods and winning anything meaningful in the near future.

Why Brady in particular, outside of all the obvious Greatest QB Ever football reasons? Brady is never hurt. Well, except that one notable incident where he tore his ACL and missed the entire year back in 2008. But that was a long time ago! They even changed the rules around hitting the quarterback specifically because of what happened to Brady to prevent it from happening again. Around that one year Brady has never missed a game due to injury. Not once.

You can chalk that up to the TB12 method if you want but really Brady has an unreal dedication to never getting hit. No quarterback is more willing to give up on a play to avoid taking a big hit than Brady. He will stand in there and get crushed if the moment calls for it, don't get me wrong. He could not have won all the games he did without the willingness to do so. But he knows he can't win games if he isn't available and thus prioritizes ensuring he stays upright more than maybe any other great quarterback in league history.

Brady is also perfectly suited to absolutely dominant with the roster but that is a secondary benefit. This is the man the Niners need. The only QB who can survive the Shanahan injury curse.