The San Francisco 49ers have been pushing the limits of their current setup in the hopes of reaching the Super Bowl. They need to manage and prevent injuries to their stars year after year, and something big needed to happen to help with that. Under the leadership of new CEO Al Guido, the 49ers are looking at bringing a major change in Santa Clara. The Niners are contemplating moving to a new practice facility nearby – a move that lines up with all the money it has already poured into the building.

The Athletic’s Vic Tafur sat down with Al Guido for an interview recently, and reported that the 49ers have “put a lot of money into the weight room and hydrotherapy, as well as the locker room and cafe.” But they still need more room next to Levi’s Stadium to expand operations. And all of it comes with a singular goal attached.

“Everything is geared to winning the Super Bowl,” Guido told Tafur. “We have been to three in the last 30 years and not won any. That’s the appetite with everyone here, and this is the right time to do it. In talking to our fans, I think they feel that, too.”

The Niners are moving because they keep adding more pieces to their operation, and the campus is starting to feel a little cramped for what they want out of it. Recovery, training, workflow, and daily space – everything adds up when a team wants to be in the title mix every year.

The 49ers haven’t announced any potential destinations yet, but a new practice facility isn’t all they’re going after this year. After Super Bowl LX’s success, Guido is also pushing for more upgrades at Levi’s Stadium so Santa Clara can host more Super Bowls.

“We have to make sure the stadium continues to be upgraded,” Guido said, “but since NFL partners, specifically their media partners, reside in this region – YouTube, and Netflix, and Apple – I think it’s fair to say that we should be hosting multiple Super Bowls after Super Bowl 60.”

This push to expand around Levi’s Stadium also explains why the substation chatter around the facility got so much attention. Last season, Peter Cowan, a board-certified clinician, put forth a theory that the emissions from a substation near the Niners’ practice facility were the reason why the Niners roster kept getting injured week after week.

“The 49ers are statistically one of the most injured teams over the past decade,” Cowan told EssentiallySports in an exclusive interview. “The fans call it the curse of Levi’s Stadium.”

“They won so much in the 80s and 90s, and the fans have been frustrated for the past decade,” Cowan added. “So, there are a lot of theories as to why their injury rates are so high, and none of them really panned out because other teams have those things too. And the only thing that I could find that was different was this electrical substation that sits right behind their facilities and likely emits a very strong AC magnetic field.”

Once the idea caught on, it turned a routine facility discussion into something much stranger. But the team has already pushed back on this theory. 49ers owner Jed York said this February that he doesn’t “believe that’s something that is a real issue,” and drew a comparison to Jerry Rice, who’d played for the 49ers for years and “seemed to be pretty healthy during his career.” General manager John Lynch took the explanation a step further in March.

“We did hire an independent scientist, and he basically [said] it was a big nothing burger. We’re safe,” Lynch declared. “We’re in a safe place of work. The levels are–I think I read in there–400 times less than unsafe zones, so it’s a normal place of work, it’s a normal gym. We are safe, we’re healthy, and we feel really good about that.”

The noise around the substation may have grabbed attention around the league, but the real story is much simpler. The 49ers are planning like a team that expects to finally break their playoff curse – and their current setup no longer looks big enough to get the job done.