San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk is tackled by Minnesota Vikings cornerback Stephon Gilmore after catching a pass during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Minneapolis.

In the post-loss scramble to figure out what went wrong on Sunday when the Minnesota Vikings defeated the San Francisco 49ers, a new buzzword emerged: separation.

Oddly enough, what kicked off the hype around this concern was a bug. For every NFL game, the league's patented Next Gen Stats (NGS) shows a variety of advanced statistics, displayed through different forms of data visualization. One of these categories is average receiver separation, a stat that's measured by the distance between a receiver and the closest defender when a targeted pass arrives.

David Lombardi, a 49ers beat reporter who is leaving the Athletic for the San Francisco Standard this week, posted a screenshot of two spider charts that showed the separation Vikings and Niners receivers got. While San Francisco's left a lot to be desired, it featured a notable issue: Deebo Samuel had 0 yards of separation. While some in the reporter's replies took that goose egg as gospel — it's worth noting this misreading was not limited to Lombardi's reply section — there was an obvious explanation underneath the graph. For some reason, the page didn't record any of Samuel's stats, despite racking up 110 receiving yards on eight catches.

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NGS had this correct on other pages, recording Samuel's separation on Sunday as three yards on average, just above the league average. However, pandora's box was opened and many on the 49ers side of the internet decried the lack of help that quarterback Brock Purdy was getting from his purported arsenal of superstars. Naturally, as a reporter is wont to do on issues involving the 24-year-old quarterback,........

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