Fred Warner went through rounds of interviews this week on Radio Row ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl 57 matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. Warner had hoped to be in Arizona this week, and he and several of his teammates are, but not in the way they expected.
The San Francisco 49ers had no shortage of confidence heading into the NFC Championship Game against the Eagles. However, losing a third and fourth quarterback of the season proved to be too much to overcome, even for a roster as talented as San Francisco's. It just wasn't meant to be, despite the 49ers riding a 12-game win streak entering the January 29 matchup.
The star linebacker does not doubt that his team will get their chance.
"I think that we are building the right stuff," Warner said Friday on KNBR's Murph & Mac show. "I think ever since I've gotten here, Kyle [Shanahan] and John [Lynch] have brought in guys who just love the game and are the right type of guys to ultimately get to where we want to go. And it's just that small little inch that we're right there. It's not like we're far off. It's right there and our time is coming."
Several of Warner's teammates have expressed disappointment with how the NFC Championship Game played out. The 49ers feel that if their only two available quarterbacks had remained healthy, they would have had a fighting chance against the Eagles.
"We literally just played a football game for pretty much a half a football with no quarterback," wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk said last week. "It's the craziest thing. … We have a talented football team. We have, hands down, the best football team in the league. Hands down. Hands down. I'm not even about to argue with anybody who thinks they should argue that."
Some saw his comment, along with other 49ers players saying similar things, as a knock on the Eagles, as if San Francisco was robbed of something rather than Philadelphia accomplishing something.
How does Warner look at the loss?
"You've got to look at it for what it is," Warner said. "We lost in a weird fashion. Who would have thought that we would have lost our third-string and fourth-string quarterbacks in the most important game of the season, right? And they scored more points than we did at the end of the day, and it sucks. We got punched in the face.
"That's kind of life, and you learn from it, what you can from it, and you move on, and you work hard in the hopes of getting back there. And I know we're going to get to the peak of the mountain at some point soon."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Warner below.
