The San Francisco 49ers recently locked up Fred Warner to long-term contract — three years at $63 million — making the star linebacker the highest-paid player in the league at the position. Warner’s new deal works out to roughly $21 million per year, which is $1 million more than Roquan Smith of the Baltimore Ravens.
Meanwhile, NBC Sports’ Chris Simms thinks the move is a good one. He believes it will help the 49ers remain a dangerous contender in the NFC.
Can 49ers Defense Compete Despite Losing Multiple Starters?
Although the Denver Broncos poached All-Pro safety Talanoa Hufanga and Warner’s long time linebacker partner Dre Greenlaw, with the Indianapolis Colts nabbing All-Pro cornerback Charvarius Ward in free agency, Simms believes that the 49ers’ defense can still strike fear into the hearts of opposing quarterbacks in 2025.
“I’m liking the 49ers getting a lot of these contracts done at this time of the year instead of letting it drag in and, like we’ve talked about, become a distraction in training camp,” Simms said on the “Pro Football Talk” podcast, alongside Mike Florio.
“You’ve got [Brock] Purdy, you’ve got Warner, you’ve got a nice nucleus of guys there. And, as we talked about yesterday, for a team that’s kind of retooling on the fly, you look at it and still go, ‘Damn, you know, it’s [Brandon] Aiyuk and [Ricky] Pearsall and [George] Kittle and [Christian] McCaffrey and Purdy and Trent Williams and Fred Warner and [Nick] Bosa.'”
After rattling off their solid core of skill position players on the offensive side — along with shouting out defensive standouts like Warner and Bosa — Simms went on to highlight their defensive depth as a potential X-Factor for the 49ers this season.
“[There are] a lot of other good players on the defense to where you go, ‘Damn, they’re not that bad.’ Even though it’s a retooling, recalibrating year, the 49ers are still going to be a pain in the butt in the NFC,” Simms concluded.
However, despite being anchored in the middle by Warner — who earned his fourth first team All-Pro selection in the past five season in 2024 — and bolstered on the edge by the 2022 Defensive Player of the Year in Bosa, this unit struggled to stop the run last season.
It resulted in one of the weakest seasons for a San Francisco defense in recent memory, with PFSN’s Defense+ metric scoring them as the 26th-rated unit in the league.
To the front office’s credit, though, they pinpointed their weaknesses and elected to shore them up, taking defensive players with their first five picks in the 2025 NFL Draft.
Their earliest picks addressed the trenches, calling up Georgia EDGE Mykel Williams in the first round and Texas DT Alfred Collins in the second. Collins projects as a solid run-stopper at 6’6″ and 332 pounds. Per ESPN, Texas only let up 2.9 yards per carry when Collins was on the field in 2023 and 2024.
San Francisco also went after LB, CB and S prospects in the 2025 NFL Draft. That showed improving the defensive unit around Warner and Bosa was a priority, perhaps expediting the 49ers’ plan to be Super Bowl contenders once again in the NFC.
