Linebacker Fred Warner has been working out at the 49ers’ facility in Santa Clara for the past couple of weeks. He has seen some of the draft prospects come through and his mind flashes back to a year ago.
“I feel like that whole process is still pretty vivid for me,” Warner said on the 49ers Insider Podcast. “I feel like it’s something I’ll always remember because it only happens once. It’s a weird mix of excitement and anxiety and stress, but it was still a fun process for me.”
Warner has passed along some of the knowledge he gained last year to his former BYU teammate, linebacker Sione Takitaki, a projected Day 3 draft pick. Warner said he would not change a thing from his experience. He did his homework on each team he visited, and he said the important thing was just to act naturally.
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Warner visited the 49ers, Jets, Broncos, Dolphins and Bills before the 49ers selected him in the third round of the draft. He said – and he promises he’s not just saying this now – that he felt after he left the Bay Area that the 49ers would be his perfect landing spot.
“Just meeting everybody and the culture they had started to establish with a new coaching staff, they had a lot of new players on the team, but I knew the feeling I felt when I stepped into the facility and shook everybody’s hand and talked to all the coaches,” Warner said. “It was a good spot.”
Warner said conversations with special-teams coordinator Richard Hightower and defensive coordinator Robert Saleh were particularly memorable.
Hightower pulled out a depth chart and proceeded to list every player who would be ahead of Warner if the 49ers were to draft him. Hightower’s message to Warner was that he would not be given anything. He would have to earn everything.
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“He was real with me,” Warner said of Hightower.
Meanwhile, Saleh gave Warner a shot of confidence.
“Sometimes I’d go into these buildings and coaches would sit there and tell me everything I couldn’t do,” Warner said.
[RELATED: Warner studied Kwon Alexander, and now they're 49ers teammates]
But Saleh told Warner that he believed him in and he went on to show Warner how he felt he would fit into the 49ers’ defensive scheme.
“Everything’s kind of worked out the right way,” Warner said.
Warner started 16 games as a rookie and registered a team-high 124 tackles as the middle linebacker.