49ers create cap space, restructure Fred Warner’s contract

The 49ers are now more than $10 million under the salary cap after restructuring Fred Warner’s contract.

The 49ers quest to create cap space will include a restructuring of linebacker Fred Warner’s contract according to Matt Barrows of the Athletic.

Warner’s base salary has been dropped to just $1.125 million according to Over the Cap, and his cap hit has been reduced to $13,837,750 for this season. The 49ers added one void year to his deal which allows them to spread his cap hit out over the next few years.

In 2025 his cap hit is scheduled to clear $30 million before dropping to $27 million in 2026. He’ll be a free agent after that season.

Warner was one of the bigger contracts the 49ers didn’t restructure last offseason. Doing so now puts them at $10,345,969 in cap space per OTC.

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Mic’d-up 49ers Super Bowl footage shows how devastated Fred Warner was after Dre Greenlaw’s sideline injury

Fred Warner was absolutely devastated.

It was the freak accident that led to Dre Greenlaw missing much of the San Francisco 49ers’ Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

When the star Niners linebacker took a step toward the field between series in the first half, he suffered an Achilles injury, a stunning turn for the stud defender for San Francisco.

Mics and cameras caught the reaction from his teammate, Fred Warner, who was tearful on the bench. Nick Bosa comforted him before Warner took a knee in prayer and tried to focus. But of course that must have been hard at a moment like that.

Here’s the footage:

Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers are in serious danger of becoming one of the best teams to never win a Super Bowl

Kyle Shanahan seems destined to waste one of the best 49ers teams ever.

The San Francisco 49ers had a Super Bowl championship waiting for them on a silver platter.

The stars were aligned. Finally, someone would add to Steve Young’s success from the early 1990s. Offensive mastermind Kyle Shanahan would be validated as a genius who could actually finish the job with a win on football’s biggest stage. These heavyweight 49ers, rife with All-Pros and even more self-assured bravado about how exceptional they are, would be cemented in history as a winner, one of the truly great teams of their era.

Instead, after losing in overtime in Super Bowl 58, Shanahan’s crew enters the offseason with another gaping chasm of missing success in the middle of its resume. Now, it’s fair to wonder whether this team will ever get over the hump.

I’d be just as speechless as Nick Bosa if I were in his shoes:

You could not have scripted a dream season for the 49ers any better.

Brock Purdy resembled a legitimate franchise quarterback at intermittent points. Perhaps his play isn’t all that sustainable in the long term, but a Mr. Irrelevant earning a Pro Bowl nod and taking his team to the only NFL game in February is the stuff of legend. That does not happen, and it might never happen again.

Brandon Aiyuk made a leap to superstar playmaker, the kind of No. 1 receiver you can run your offense through. Every bit of the workhorse tailback, Christian McCaffrey put the 49ers on his back each week, and he still couldn’t be stopped. There isn’t a better fit for a Shanahan offense. Some disconcerting stepbacks aside, Fred Warner and Nick Bosa comprised a solid core that harassed even the finest of quarterbacks when they were locked in.

The chess pieces were there. The execution wasn’t.

From a macro perspective, the NFC slate of worthy playoff rivals — including the largely also-ran Philadelphia Eagles — was feeble this season. Despite the occasional struggles, San Francisco’s path to the big game could not have been easier on paper. They got every lucky bounce and the fortunate side of the playoff bracket. The Kansas City Chiefs waited for them in the Super Bowl as juggernauts in experience but assuredly the weakest of the Patrick Mahomes era. Against the right opponent, the Chiefs were ripe for the taking.

The 49ers, try as they might say otherwise, were not up to the task. They were bog-standard cannon fodder for the latest chapter in the epic novel known as Patrick Mahomes’ NFL career.

At a certain point, reductive analysis, which can feel like an easy excuse or a cliché, rings true. It’s impossible to ignore what your eyes tell you. In this case, finally casting Kyle Shanahan as a big-game loser is what is more than appropriate. Despite four NFC title game appearances and two Super Bowl berths (with the 49ers), he is the definitive reason this impeccably talented team may never reach the mountaintop.

At least he’s honest about hunkering down with his heartbroken players:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with how Shanahan’s team approached a majority of this game. If anything, it showed that he did learn from past Super Bowl failures.

The 49ers’ offense was balanced, ensuring it never strayed away from McCaffrey too much at the expense of getting Purdy going. Both players, for the most part, did what they wanted against Kansas City’s defense. After a weeks-long showcase of shoddy secondary play, the 49ers’ defense and Warner made it look like Mahomes played in the mud for most of Sunday night. If I had told you, dearest reader, that Travis Kelce would have one target, one catch and one yard well past the halfway point of this Super Bowl, you’d have thought these Chiefs were down by at least four scores.

Kansas City was dead in the water, practically begging to be put out of its misery. Shanahan couldn’t get his team to land the finishing blow.

When it seemed like the 49ers could escape with the win in extra time, it was his thought process with the NFL’s new overtime rules that cost his team a chance at glory:

I’ve never seen a sequence that exemplifies a coach or a team quite as well. What’s wrong with the Shanahan 49ers? Why can’t they get over the hump?

Despite their evident talent and preparation advantages, the 49ers are always thinking about what’s next. Almost to their detriment. They’re so good that they love putting the cart before the horse, shining when everything is going well, calculating what might go wrong because being proactive is so much better than reacting on the fly.

They are above the regular process. They are royalty without owning a castle or a tangible crown. They think they are good enough to worry about what hasn’t happened yet instead of being in the moment.

I can’t sit here and pretend that other NFL coaches wouldn’t have also taken the ball to start Super Bowl overtime. But Shanahan isn’t supposed to be like other overmatched coaches. He’s held to a higher standard, the “golden boy” coach of the sport. His overtime reasoning — thinking both teams would score anyway, so what does it matter who has the ball first? — is what ended up giving the Chiefs the inherent advantage on their game-winning drive. It’s vintage Shanahan math, worrying about the worst-case scenario so much that you end up putting your overconfident team behind the eight-ball anyway.

No wonder he’s been a part of multiple Super Bowl losses as a coach where his team, at one point, held a 10-point lead.

While there might be light cosmetic changes here and there, the 49ers will probably run it back next season. They’ll likely cruise to another NFC West title and be in a strong position for another run to the Super Bowl. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

But from the jump this season, this Super Bowl felt well within their grasp. The way Shanahan and co. wasted the opportunity and let it slip through their fingers makes it seem like this era of 49ers football will finish with a depressing thud.

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What on earth does Kyle Shanahan do now?

Kyle Shanahan is the greatest offensive mind of his generation, but that won’t matter anymore until and unless he can finally win a Super Bowl.

San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan is unquestionably the best offensive coach in the NFL. He’s got a list of acolytes that are also head coaches and other kinds of offensive play-callers that seems to paper half the league.

But right now, none of that matters. Because for the third time in a Super Bowl, Shanahan as either the offensive coordinator or head coach has blown a lead of at least 10 points.

That’s the toughest thing about getting to that many high-profile games — if you keep losing them, that’s the only way people will define you. And for Shanahan, it’s now losing Super Bowl LI as the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive coordinator, infamously blowing that 28-3 lead, and two Super Bowls (LVI and LVIII) in which he had 10 points on the Chiefs and couldn’t come through. Shanahan is also on the losing side of the only two overtime Super Bowls — LI and this one.

Sometimes, history really sucks.

“There’s nothing different to say,” Shanahan said after this particular srushing loss. “I mean I don’t care how you lose when you lose Super Bowls, especially ones you think you can pull off, it hurts. When you’re in the NFL, I think every team should hurt, except for one at the end. We’ve gotten pretty damn close, but we haven’t pulled it off. We’re hurting right now, but it doesn’t take away from how proud of our guys I am. I’m really proud of them today, too. As part of sports, as part of football, as part of life, as part of life. I’m glad we put ourselves out there. I love our team. We’ll recover, and we’ll be back next year strong.”

He’s not wrong about any of that but the cast this puts over one’s legacy is also undeniable.

Shanahan is hardly the only coach to face this crucible. Tom Landry couldn’t get past the Vince Lombardi Packers or Blanton Collier’s Cleveland Browns in the back half of the 1960s. John Madden’s Oakland Raiders went to three straight conference championships and lost them all to the eventual Super Bowl winner from 1973 to 1975. And the list of teams that had to take a back seat to Bill Belichick when Belichick was winning six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots was … well, rather long.

If you get over the hump eventually, the narrative goes away. It did for Landry and for Madden when they won their own Super Bowls. But in Shanahan’s case, we’re still left wanting when it comes to the biggest game, and that will invariably — and not unfairly — complicate his legacy over time as it does now.

Until he is able to change it.

This time around, it seemed like Shanahan had the guys to get it done. Brock Purdy had been the near-perfect distiller of his offense in ways that no other quarterback had been. Purdy’s targets are as talented as any in the league, and Steve Wilks’ defense completely dominated the Chiefs in this game … until they didn’t on the last drive. Patrick Mahomes threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to Mecole Hardman with three seconds left in the first overtime period, and the Chiefs won 25-22.

Belichick’s Patriots and now the Chiefs are the only teams in the new millennium to repeat as Super Bowl champions. With three championships in five years, they’re the new dynasty, and Mahomes is the unkillable force.

So, it’s Shanahan who’s on the wrong side of history and dynasty.

Shanahan’s bona fides are undeniable. No offensive play caller and play designer is better at displacing defenses, but all that statement will get now is, “Well, if he’s so great, why can’t he maintain it when it matters?”

And that’s a fair, if cruel, question.

As far as what Shanahan can do to erase that narrative? It might be up to making the Super Bowl in a year when the Chiefs somehow miss it. Or, to hope (quite possibly in vain) that things will turn his way if he has to face this juggernaut once again.

Right now, there’s only the pain of not only falling short, but falling short in the same way, over and over, in a Sisyphean struggle to roll that impossibly heavy boulder up the hill, feeling like you might be on the wrong end of the wrath of the gods.

Super Bowl LVIII: Staff Predictions for Chiefs vs. 49ers

What happens on Sunday?

The final game of the NFL season is upon us as we not have to hear two of the worst words in the vocabulary of any sports fan: off-season.

But who wins Sunday’s game between the Chiefs and 49ers in Las Vegas?

Will Patrick Mahomes take a step in trying to chase down Tom Brady and his seven rings?  He’ll need the Chiefs defense to stay nasty to do so.

Or will it be the unlikely hero Brock Purdy helping the 49ers to what would be their sixth Super Bowl championship in franchise history?

Who wins and why?

Here is what the Fighting Irish Wire staff sees playing out on Super Bowl Sunday:

Ranking the 49ers’ six most important players in Super Bowl

The 6 most important #49ers in Sunday’s Super Bowl:

The 49ers’ star power is apparent. They enter Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Chiefs boasting perhaps the best roster in the NFL.

While the top-to-bottom talent for San Francisco is strong, there are a handful of players who jump out as particularly essential for them against a red-hot Kansas City squad. These are the 49ers’ six most important players for securing a win and a sixth Lombardi Trophy:

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Super Bowl MVP odds for almost every 49ers player

Here are the Super Bowl MVP odds for basically every #49ers player. Who would you be betting on?

The 49ers haven’t a Super Bowl win, and by extension a Super Bowl MVP, since they thumped the Chargers 49-26 in Super Bowl XXIX.

This year they enter Super Bowl LVIII for a third try at securing their sixth Lombardi Trophy. Who would be the game’s MVP if San Francisco can knock off the Kansas City Chiefs to avenge their last Super Bowl defeat?

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History says it would be quarterback, Brock Purdy. The 49ers are a little different than other teams though in the distribution of their club’s success, so the door is open for a slew of players to potentially take home the honor should San Francisco win.

Luckily for us, BetMGM has odds on virtually every single 49ers player to win the award. Here they are:

(Quick reminder! With these odds, if a player is +500, that means a $100 would win $500. At +1000, a $100 bet fetches $1,000.)

Demario Davis selected for 2024 Pro Bowl Games as an alternate

Saints captain Demario Davis has been selected for 2024 Pro Bowl Games as an alternate, replacing Super Bowl-bound 49ers linebacker Fred Warner:

Congratulations are in order for Demario Davis: the New Orleans Saints linebacker has been selected for the 2024 Pro Bowl Games as an alternate, replacing San Francisco 49ers starter Fred Warner on the NFC roster. He’s the first Saints linebacker selected for back-to-back Pro Bowls since Jonathan Vilma did it in 2009 and 2010.

Davis, 35, was also named to the Pro Bowl Games last season for the first time in his impressive NFL career. He’s earned All-Pro recognition in each of the last five years with the Saints but this is just his second Pro Bowl Games appearance. He’ll be joining teammate Rashid Shaheed at this year’s event.

The 2024 Pro Bowl Games will feature several days of contests between the NFC and AFC all-star rosters, leading up to a flag football game scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 4 at Camping World Stadium in Orlando. Fans can tune in on ESPN, ABC, Disney XD, ESPN+, and ESPN Deportes.

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Packers have to know where 49ers LB Fred Warner is at all times

The Packers are well aware of how disruptive 49ers LB Fred Warner can be against the run and pass.

The Green Bay Packers’ offense faces perhaps their toughest test in the San Francisco 49ers’ defense, and at the heart of that unit are linebackers Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw.

Warner is considered by many to be the best inside linebacker in football. You name it, and he does it for this 49ers’ defense. Warner is PFF’s highest-graded linebacker this season, totaling 15 pressures, 128 total tackles, and limiting pass-catchers to under 10 yards per reception.

Warner’s counterpart, Greenlaw, is an impact player himself, recording 120 tackles, holding pass-catchers to just 8.3 yards per catch, along with recording seven pressures and two sacks. Greenlaw did not play in Week 18 with an Achilles injury but was back at practice on Wednesday.

“Oh yeah, huge,” said Jordan Love of Warner’s impact. “I think he’s the leader of the defense and obviously he’s one of the best linebackers in the NFL. So, he does a lot for that defense, but I think all around they’ve got some pretty good players over there.”

As a collective defensive unit, the 49ers are holding opposing quarterbacks to just 5.9 yards per pass attempt, the fifth-lowest rate during the regular season. The 49ers’ defense is allowing just over 4.0 yards per carry in the run game and ranks 10th in ESPN’s run-stop win rate metric.

Both Warner and Greenlaw have had a significant hand in those results.

“You see him all over the tape,” added Love. “He’s flying around, making plays left and right. So he’s a big-time player that you’ve got to know where he’s at and find ways to take advantage of what they do, but he’s a great player.”

When facing a linebacker duo of this caliber, offenses have to account for them on every single play, regardless of whether it is a run or a pass.

If unaccounted for in the run game, it will make getting to the second level for Aaron Jones and Co. all the more difficult with Warner and Greenlaw there to fill gaps at the line of scrimmage—not to mention their abilities to flow sideline-to-sideline to contain outside rushing attempts.

In the passing game, their presence and sure tackling abilities muddy things up over the middle of the field, creating tight passing lanes and making it more difficult to pick up yards after the catch.

“We just gotta be sound and be on our fundamentals,” said Christian Watson at his locker on Wednesday. “Take what we can take and get some YAC when we can and be smart with the football, as long as we’re holding onto it and chopping away at it, we’ll be all right.”

But along with what they bring to the table once the ball is snapped, what they do beforehand is equally important, making checks based on the offense’s alignment and pre-snap movement, along with making sure everyone knows what their defensive responsibilities are.

With all of that said, the Packers’ offense can present its own challenges for the 49ers’ linebackers. Love is playing at an elite level, which on its own, is going to stress opposing defenses. The Packers offensive line is playing its best football, along with Aaron Jones being Aaron Jones.

And while the Packers may not have a true No. 1 target in the passing game, what they do have are five to seven legitimate targets on any given play if you include the tight ends. That ability to spread the ball around regardless of the situation forces the defense to defend the entire field.

When you pair top-notch quarterback play with running and passing games that are able to generate explosive plays, you get an offense that can make a lot of noise—as we saw in Dallas. However, led by Warner, this Niners defense is a very different beast.

“I’ll just speak to Jordan Love, and the way that he’s playing right now is really great,” Warner told reporters.

“The things that you see showing up, obviously learned under Aaron (Rodgers), some of the mannerisms and the way that he’s operating under center and in the gun, he’s doing a great job. He’s making the throws, making smart decisions, which is what you want the most from that position from a young player and so obviously it’s going to be a huge challenge for us.”

One voter’s 2023 AP First-Team All-Pro ballot

If you’ve ever wanted to see an official First-Team All-Pro ballot, we have you covered.

There are moments in your career where you think to yourself… “Yeah, this is a moment to remember.” Two years ago, when the Associated Press asked me to be one of the analysts responsible for voting for the First- and Second-Team All-Pro teams, as well as NFL Most Valuable Player and all other individual awards, that was certainly such a moment for me.

So, this is my second year of voting, and I wanted to share my first-team ballot with our readers. It’s an honor I take incredibly seriously, and this process involves a ton of advanced metrics, tape study, and reflections from a season of diving into both.

Some of these votes were easy; some were incredibly difficult. But it will give you a bit of insight into what happens with an All-Pro vote.