Fred Warner has been credited with 24 missed tackles, the most in any single season during his career. He leads the San Francisco 49ers in missed tackles by a significant margin, with the next-closest player being linebacker Dre Greenlaw with 16.
While Warner is on pace for his best-ever Pro Football Focus grade (currently at 90.2), his tackling grade this season stands at 51.1, a career-low. However, Warner showed improvement in this area by not having a missed tackle against the Washington Commanders on Sunday, a positive sign as the 49ers head into the postseason.
What does Warner think about leading the team in missed tackles? Is the statistic somewhat deceiving?
"Stats don't always tell the truth, the whole story," Warner said Tuesday morning on Bay Area radio station KNBR's "Murph and Markus" show. "I think some missed tackles are valid. There's times where I'm leaving my feet on contact or I'm not wrapping a guy up. Super valid.
"There's other ones where I'm trying my hardest. I'm running from one side of the field to the other. I'm trying to lay out to make a tackle for my team, and I don't make it just because I'm playing hard or I'm trying to really decleat a guy, and I just happen to miss. So I'm not really overly concerned with that."
While he leads the 49ers in missed tackles, Warner also tops his team in another statistical category—an important one. With 132 tackles this season, the linebacker is on track for a career-best in that category, having recorded 118 or more tackles in each of his six NFL seasons.
"I think the thing about it is, even though there are those missed tackles, I'm still on track to break my career high in tackles this upcoming game," Warner said. "It's like, am I really just not making the tackle? For sure, it's something that I have to improve on, but at the same time, I think I'm always in the right position. I got to just make sure I'm being smarter in some of those situations."
Warner admits he isn't sure how analytics sites like Pro Football Focus credit missed tackles, so he isn't too concerned with the statistic. He's more focused on the internal evaluation of his play.
"I'm watching the tape; my coaches watch the tape," Warner explained. "I'm always just focusing on what we talk about internally. But other than that, I'm not sure how they measure it."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Warner below.
