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Fred Warner Has been Playing Through an Ankle Fracture Since Week 4

Here's what Warner said about the injury Wednesday in the locker room.

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner (54) after the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner (54) after the game against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
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SANTA CLARA -- Through the first four weeks of the season, Fred Warner was the front-runner to win the Defensive Player of the Year Award.

Then he injured his ankle Week 4 against the Patriots. He left the game at halftime, returned the following week and hasn't missed a snap since. But he hasn't been himself. In fact, he has been a liability at times -- missing tackles and giving up catches.

And that's because he has been playing through an ankle fracture. Here's what Warner said about the injury Wednesday in the locker room.

Q: Is your ankle injury behind you?

WARNER: "No, it's something I deal with every game. I get on that table before the game and get it shot up every single game just to be able to roll. It's not an excuse. It's just what it is. It's the NFL. You're not going to be healthy. You have to go out there and find ways to execute and play at a high level to win every single week."

Q: Will that continue for the rest of the season?

WARNER: "We'll see. Every week I'm just trying to get a little bit better."

Q: Is it something that only will heal with time off and not playing football?

WARNER: "Yeah, it was a fracture when I sprained it, so anytime you fracture a bone, if you continue to play on it, the bone is not going to be able to heal itself. Just have to continue to fight through."

Q: So you did fracture your ankle earlier this year?

WARNER: "I probably shouldn't get too into it. I probably already made a mistake by saying all of this, but yeah, back when I hurt it, there was a bone fracture."

Q: In that Patriots game?

WARNER: "Yeah."

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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