{"id":902512,"date":"2026-05-27T10:09:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/902512\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:09:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:09:19","slug":"49ers-news-finally-a-tease-of-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/902512\/","title":{"rendered":"49ers News: Finally! A tease of football"},"content":{"rendered":"

49ers\u2019 Fred Warner wanted a quick rehab from a devastating injury. So he learned how to swim (paywall)<\/a>
\u201cIf you\u2019d asked Fred Warner six months ago whether he knew how to swim, the answer would have been: sort of.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco 49ers\u2019 middle linebacker moved through the water like a lot of people who have never had formal lessons \u2014 head up, legs down, a lot of splashing, very little efficiency\u2026.Steadily, Warner\u2019s head came down, his legs came up and his back straightened. He went from swimming the width of the pool \u2014 and having to take breaks in between \u2014 to going the full length with few rests. Hopkins said the linebacker was in the pool two days a week for 45 minutes to an hour, including one sequence in which he swam on New Year\u2019s Eve and was back for another session on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

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His form isn\u2019t perfect yet. Football players have massive quads, which tend to sink. Hopkins mused that \u201ctrap bulk\u201d might be the reason Warner\u2019s left arm doesn\u2019t come over as smoothly as his right. And his sheer size makes coming out of the wall \u2014 where you have to be as compact and streamlined as possible \u2014 difficult. They haven\u2019t really worked on that yet, and the only stroke Warner has mastered is freestyle.<\/p>\n

But Hopkins said Warner could now beat some of his swimmers in a short sprint, and that in six months, he became a better swimmer than people who\u2019ve spent their whole lives in the water.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur curve was just exponential,\u201d he said. \u201cI wish I would have videoed our starting point. As I told him (recently), he swims better than a lot of Division I water polo players.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the ankle and Warner\u2019s endurance, both benefited greatly from the pool work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kawakami: How the 49ers managed the calmest offseason of this era (paywall)<\/a>
\u201cBut more broadly, Lynch and Shanahan seemed to have settled some large things about this team and their tenure in the last 12 months.<\/p>\n

Because this was not a desperate offseason. This was not a gotta-go-for-it offseason. This was not a save-our-jobs offseason. This absolutely wasn\u2019t a consensus-mock-draft-big-board-please-tell-us-what-to-do offseason.<\/p>\n

This was an offseason about full sustainability \u2014 Shanahan and Lynch have gotten this team through nine mostly very good seasons, and now they\u2019re pointing to the next four, five, or even nine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 49ers will monitor these 3 positions this season<\/a>
\u201cIt\u2019ll be fascinating to see how Raheem Morris deploys the safeties and if Brown or Sigle, or one of the rookie free agents, steals the show.<\/p>\n

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They might be keeping the seat warm for Jessie Bates<\/a>, who is entering the final year of his contract with Atlanta<\/a>. A pre- or mid-season trade is something to keep an eye on. If the Falcons start slow, or one of their rookies wins the starting job, Bates could be expendable to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

49ers owner Jed York reveals the only NFL Draft pick he ever pushed for<\/a>
\u201cThe only guy that I ever wanted us to draft was [wide receiver] Arnaz Battle,\u201d York said. \u201cI went to school with Arnaz, knew him as a guy. [Otherwise], I try to stay as far away from that as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"49ers\u2019 Fred Warner wanted a quick rehab from a devastating injury. So he learned how to swim (paywall)\u201cIf…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,121038,223,682,7,592,1516,22882,6,1161,252,2624,2623,7910],"class_list":["post-902512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-49ers","tag-49ers","tag-arnaz-battle","tag-atlanta","tag-ca","tag-football","tag-fred-warner","tag-jessie-bates","tag-middle-linebacker","tag-nfl","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfrancisco49ers","tag-santa-clara"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116645997034624192","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}