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SAN JOSE, Calif. — If you’d asked Fred Warner six months ago whether he knew how to swim, the answer would have been: sort of.
The San Francisco 49ers’ middle linebacker moved through the water like a lot of people who have never had formal lessons — head up, legs down, a lot of splashing, very little efficiency.
Said Sage Hopkins: “He was at Level 1 — not drowning, but if he fell off of a boat far from shore, he likely wouldn’t have made it back.”
Hopkins, 53, is in position to judge. He was a junior lifeguard as far back as elementary school, and he’s lived on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii, where he regularly surfed 20-foot waves and occasionally rescued distressed swimmers. For the past 21 years, he’s been the women’s swim and dive coach at San Jose State.
That’s where he met Warner, who arrived at the school’s immaculate outdoor pool one day in late November looking for a way to accelerate his rehabilitation from a broken and dislocated ankle.
Hopkins noticed two things right away.
One was Warner’s star power. The walk from the pool to the university parking garage takes you past the windows of the student recreation center. When the 6-foot-4, 236-pound Warner made that trek the first time, he was noticed immediately, and the building emptied en masse.
“He stopped, took a picture with every single person that asked and then had a meaningful interaction with each of them,” Hopkins recalled. “It took a good 20 minutes to walk a hundred yards. I think they were so starstruck. I still see people freeze almost into a momentary catatonic state when he walks up. It happens pretty regularly.”
Hopkins also quickly realized Warner wanted — badly — to be pushed hard.
His injury had occurred seven minutes into an Oct. 12 road loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when teammate Ji’Ayir Brown inadvertently crashed into his lower leg. Warner, who had missed just one game in 7 1/2 seasons, looked down to find his right foot facing the wrong direction. He watched teammates and opponents alike glance at his foot, then frantically summon medical help.
“I remember laying down on my side and kind of just waiting for them to get to me,” he said. “And Dr. (Tim) McAdams came up, and it’s — pop, pop! — he snapped it right back. He didn’t really say much to me. He just kind of held my leg, and he snapped it right back. I felt like a crunch.
“And then I remember being on my back, and I see Kyle (Shanahan) come to me, Robert (Saleh), and then all my teammates. And they’re all kind of saying, ‘Sorry, buddy.’ And I’m like, ‘I know. I’m good. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.’”
Fred Warner, right, with head team physician Tim McAdams after he was injured in Tampa, Fla., in October. (Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)
Warner isn’t the type to drape a towel over his head and go into woe-is-me mode. In fact, as he was being carted away, television cameras caught him serenely chatting with McAdams, who was concentrating on stabilizing his lower leg. Warner noted things became more hectic as the cart disappeared into the stadium tunnel.
“I was telling McAdams I didn’t even get a chance to protect myself, I never even saw it coming,” he said. “And then immediately my mind went to, ‘Oh, no, my mom and my wife just saw that. And everybody in my family.’ So it was, ‘Oh, somebody give me my phone! I’ve got to call my wife! I’ve got to call my mom!’”
Warner had surgery two days later. Early on, he said there was “zero talk” about playing again that season. Instead, the plan was for a methodical rehabilitation. Like many veterans, Warner usually doesn’t take part in spring OTA practices. The next time he’d suit up was training camp, which afforded him an unhurried, nine-month comeback. And he was fine with that.
Well, he was fine with that at first.
Warner was confined to a walking boot, crutches and a scooter for six weeks after surgery to allow the bone to heal and the sutures to fully close. At one point, he went for an X-ray and casually floated to his orthopedist the notion of coming back during the playoffs. The reply surprised him.
“I wasn’t expecting a yes to come out of his mouth,” Warner said.
Even with that assessment, the 49ers advised him to continue to keep his sights on the 2026 season. When asked by reporters, Shanahan routinely downplayed the possibility of Warner’s returning for the playoffs. Internally, the team was even more skeptical.
“I remember (head athletic trainer) Dustin Little being like, ‘Oh, no, don’t worry about that. (The orthopedist) doesn’t really understand what it takes to go out there and play in a game,’” Warner recalled. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’”
Still, two things were happening simultaneously as Thanksgiving approached. Warner’s checkups showed he was healing ahead of schedule. And the 49ers somehow kept winning games despite their avalanche of injuries. They were in the middle of what would become a six-game winning streak when Warner decided to press the accelerator on his recovery, hoping he could return for a deep playoff run.
Which is how he ended up with Hopkins at the San Jose State pool in late November. Warner and his advisers thought swimming would be a good way to maintain stamina and help the flexibility of the ankle, which was decidedly stiff when the boot finally came off.
Though they were cautious at first, Warner could tell right away the pool work had an effect.
“I was constantly dealing with swelling,” he said. “So when I would put it in the water and just kick, it was a natural flushing of the ankle. Every time I got out of the water, my ankle looked so much better than it did going in.”
Fred Warner (right), shown here with a San Jose State athlete, swam twice a week while rehabbing his ankle injury. (Courtesy of Sage Hopkins / SJSU)
Hopkins, meanwhile, noticed his pupil was learning at an exponential rate, and that having him toddle around on a foam noodle wasn’t going to cut it.
Teaching adults how to swim is hard. They’re usually uncomfortable getting water in their mouth. The breathing technique doesn’t come naturally. Parts of their body float, others sink and the entire process is disorienting.
Warner, however, got better right away.
“One of the definitions of talent that I like best is how quickly you can learn something,” Hopkins said. “And with Fred, I could give him one cue, tell him one thing and it was immediately understood and retained.”
Hopkins devised a regimen that would appeal to a football player. At first, he had Warner swim the width of the pool — 25 yards — and timed him on every lap. Warner found that as his technique improved, his times went down.
“He was immediately asking me: ‘What would Michael Phelps do for a time on this? What would your fastest sprinter do?’” Hopkins said. “And that made me realize it was going to be a motivating factor for him.”
He also hooked Warner up to various resistance devices, mimicking what rehabilitating football players do on a field. One was a “power tower,” which connects a swimmer via a harness to a bucket-and-pully system on the side of the pool. The more water that goes into the 15-gallon bucket, the harder it is to swim.
“He was going with almost a full bucket of water, which is a lot,” Hopkins said. “We’ve got sprinters on our team that couldn’t pull as much as him. So I figured this was stuff that would really resonate with him, that was in his wheelhouse.”
Steadily, Warner’s head came down, his legs came up and his back straightened. He went from swimming the width of the pool — and having to take breaks in between — 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’s Eve and was back for another session on New Year’s Day.
His form isn’t perfect yet. Football players have massive quads, which tend to sink. Hopkins mused that “trap bulk” might be the reason Warner’s left arm doesn’t come over as smoothly as his right. And his sheer size makes coming out of the wall — where you have to be as compact and streamlined as possible — difficult. They haven’t really worked on that yet, and the only stroke Warner has mastered is freestyle.
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’ve spent their whole lives in the water.
“Our curve was just exponential,” he said. “I 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.”
As for the ankle and Warner’s endurance, both benefited greatly from the pool work.
As the regular season drew to a close, the 49ers altered the plan and decided Warner might be able to play in the NFC Championship if the team made it that far. Still, they wanted him to wait as long as possible — just before the championship game — before getting back on the practice field to give the ankle and leg the maximum time possible to recover.
Warner beat even that. He didn’t want to pack everything into championship week and instead practiced ahead of San Francisco’s divisional showdown against the Seattle Seahawks. The 49ers lost that game 41-6, but Warner’s practice went … well, swimmingly. And he said he definitely would have been on the field had the 49ers pulled off the upset in Seattle.
Um, what broken ankle? Fred Warner, Dee Winters, Ricky Pearsall, Trent Williams among those on hand for 49ers’ lively Wednesday practice… pic.twitter.com/lqy9YdqUaE
— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) January 14, 2026
“My endurance was great,” he said. “That was the least of my worries. That was something I wondered about — kind of being thrown into the fire of a Wednesday practice format. And I just got thrown into all the individual drills with no restriction. I felt great. I thought it was a best-case scenario of how it went that day.”
Although he might not take part in the OTA practices that begin Wednesday, Warner is now fully cleared for football. And he still swims at San Jose State one day of the week.
“It’s funny,” he said. “I always dread going over there. Because I know it’s going to whup my ass. But at the end of day when I get done, I’m so glad I did it. Because it’s a great workout.”
The guy who could barely stay afloat six months ago now jokes about taking part in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Hopkins doesn’t think it’s all that far-fetched.
“I think Fred could be in the Olympics in a whole variety of sports,” he said. “He’s got a gifted ability to understand movement and to learn movement very quickly.”
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