The San Francisco 49ers looked to be defying the odds with a strong start to the 2025 season, until halfway through the first quarter of last weekend’s loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Star Fred Warner’s ankle was broken and dislocated on a gruesome play that will cost the linebacker the rest of the season.
Immediately, things turned grim for 49ers fans, as the team felt the lack of Warner’s presence for the rest of the game in the loss, both on and off the field. Warner has been the chess piece of the defense, and was arguably having the best year of his career coming off a year where he played through a broken ankle.
That, paired with the crushing Nick Bosa blow a few weeks ago, has completely changed the outlook of the 49ers season, even at 4-2.
“To see how gruesome it was, it hurt,” wide receiver Kendrick Bourne acknowledged about the real-time reaction of seeing Warner’s injury on The Richard Sherman Podcast. “And to see who it was, him playing consecutive games, about to break the record, all those things, was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”
Bourne continued, noting how that loss ‘took the life out’ of the 49ers in the Buccaneers game, even as they tried to persevere in the second half.
“It took the life out of us in that game,” Bourne continued. “It was a tough time. I loved the way we still battled, but it’s just a lot of adversity we’re facing, and it’s going to show who we are, who our backups are.”
Head coach Kyle Shanahan acknowledged the difficulty of losing a player like Warner, noting how the margin for error has significantly decreased now.
“The reality is we lost another really good player,” Shanahan said about Warner. “But, what are we going to do about it? There’s lots of stuff I can show our guys and stuff from the tape that’s very encouraging of some real good things Tatum [Bethune] did when he went in and replaced him. I think we’ve got a lot of young guys doing some real good things on defense.
“But, what type of team are we going to become going forward? I think we have players here we can win with, but it makes it harder to make mistakes and things like that. I thought that was something we did too much of yesterday. Those are the things I’m really focused on now, about if we want to make something out of our record going forward, of what we’ve already accomplished with that 4-2. Guys got to keep getting better. We’ve got to put pressure on some veterans to play the best that they can. And these rookies, who I believe are coming along, need to put the pressure on themselves to clean up the mistakes.”
Shanahan also acknowledged Warner’s presence and leadership as the MIKE linebacker, which will be hard to replace, as San Francisco saw on Sunday.
With him out, the 49ers will need younger players, such as Tatum Bethune and Nick Martin, to step up in various roles. But, it’s hard to see San Francisco achieving their ultimate goal without their two best defensive players on such a young team, which is a crushing reality at this stage of the season.
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