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Grading the 49ers Linebackers at the Bye Week

Besides Warner, the 49ers have a bunch of liabilities at linebacker.

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner (54) during the fourth quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner (54) during the fourth quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
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The 49ers have the week off, so let's grade them position by position based solely on what they've done this season. So far, we've graded the quarterback, the running backs, the wide receivers, the tight ends, the offensive linemen and the defensive linemen.

POSITION: Linebacker

NAMES: Fred Warner, De'Vondre Campbell, Dee Winters, Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles.

GRADE: B-Minus

COMMENTS: Not only is Fred Warner the best player on the 49ers and the best middle linebacker in football, he's also the highest-graded coverage player in the NFL regardless of position according to Pro Football Focus. Warner makes it nearly impossible for opposing quarterbacks to complete passes over the middle against the 49ers, which makes him unique and incredibly valuable. His run defense is merely solid, but the NFL is a passing league and he's a coverage monster. No one plays better while moving backward than Warner does.

Besides Warner, the 49ers have a bunch of liabilities at linebacker.

De'Vondre Campbell is a veteran who knows where to be but is too old and slow to get there most of the time. Dee Winters is young and explosive, but lacks instincts and isn't always where he should be. The 49ers are hoping Dre Greenlaw will return soon from a torn Achilles he suffered in the Super Bowl eight months ago. I'm guessing Greenlaw won't play much until the playoffs if he plays at all this season. Which means the 49ers probably need another linebacker.

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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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