With the NFL having an extensive 18-week season, a player can plausibly rejoin a team for a postseason run when it should otherwise be season-ending. Could the San Francisco 49ers be lucky for once?

With the advancements in medicine in the last decade or so, players can return from injury much sooner than they used to. The 2025 NFL season kicked off on Sept. 4 and won’t end until Super Bowl LX on Feb. 8, 2026.

That’s still a little over three months from now – which lines up with a best-case scenario return of linebacker Fred Warner. If there’s any hope of Warner suiting up for the Niners again this season, it would only be in the case of a Super Bowl run.

Matt Barrows of the Athletic (subscription required) spoke with two Northern California orthopedic surgeons who put the typical recovery timeline for Warner at around four months, barring any variables that could both positively or negatively affect that trajectory.

Head coach Kyle Shanahan said that Warner had a successful surgery on Tuesday, but that there’s no specifics on a timeline for his recovery. While he had initially said he doesn’t expect Warner back, there’s a world where professional athletes can shorten a 12-week timeline.

Barrows spoke with the surgeons about advancements in treatment and technology such as underwater treadmills that could aid Warner’s rehabilitation. Now, of course, that’s all under an assumption that it was a clean fracture, and surrounding ligaments weren’t torn. Those specifics aren’t public. There’s always a chance a follow-up procedure is needed and resets the timeline a bit.

The reality is simple: unless San Francisco reaches a Super Bowl, there’s no expectation that Warner will be back this season. Even if they do, the chance is still razor-thin given how closely it lines up with a best-case return. So maybe it’s an outlandish dream for the team to have.

Even if it is, it’s something that could matter to the mentality of a 49ers squad that has a lot of reason to lose hope. It could matter to the motivation of Tatum Bethune as he steps in as next-man up to fill Warner’s shoes.

San Francisco already has four wins this year, three of which are crucial divisional victories. There’s a world where they could sneak into the playoffs at 10-7. Now, if that’s the case, that would mean five losses without Warner and probably not a realistic Super Bowl run.

But what if they figure it out and get there? It would be the story of the year.