Latest news with #NickMartin
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
49ers 3rd-Round Rookie Linebacker Suffers Fracture
49ers 3rd-Round Rookie Linebacker Suffers Fracture originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The San Francisco 49ers have suffered an offseason injury as rookie linebacker Nick Martin fractured his thumb while lifting weights, as reported by Noah Furtado of the San Francisco Chronicle. Advertisement Early reports were that it was a recent injury, but Furtado clarified the situation on his X account. "Regarding rumors that #49ers third-round LB Nick Martin broke his thumb, he suffered a minor fracture a few weeks ago but did not miss any subsequent practices or workouts, per source. Martin won't need surgery and is expected to be fully healthy by training camp." It's notable that the thumb injury never sidelined Martin and he never missed any offseason practice time. He's expected to be fully ready for the beginning of training camp. The 22-year-old missed seven games of his final season at Oklahoma State with a knee injury, but he's expected to be a contributor in his rookie season after the 49ers drafted him in the third round with the No. 75 overall pick. Advertisement Martin's pick wasn't a surprise, as the team needed to address defense in the draft. Martin was a First-Team All-Big 12 standout who posted 140 tackles with 16 for loss last season, and should have an opportunity to crack the starting lineup early, as San Francisco doesn't have a ton of seasoned veterans at outside linebacker other than Fred Warner. If Martin proves he's healthy, he'll be fighting for playing time with Dee Winters, Tatum Bethune and others. But first, he could have to impress on special teams for defensive coordinator Robert Saleh. Related: 49ers' George Kittle Uses 'Violence' to Describe Robert Saleh's Return Related: 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan Breaks Top 10 NFL Best Coaches This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 20, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
49ers' John Lynch provides clear expectations for younger SF team
The post 49ers' John Lynch provides clear expectations for younger SF team appeared first on ClutchPoints. San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch made it clear that the upcoming NFL season is a pivotal one for the team, with an offseason emphasis on youth development and long-term championship goals. Coming off a disastrous 6–11 finish that saw the Niners finish last in the NFC West, the team is reshaping its identity around a younger, faster, and more resilient core. Advertisement In a recent piece by NBC Sports Bay Area's Matt Maiocco, Lynch outlined his expectations for the 49ers' roster, emphasizing a balance of opportunity and patience. 'We'll be a younger team,' Lynch said. 'It's a young man's game. But you're probably going to take some lumps and it's going to take some time.' Lynch's comments are especially relevant as the San Francisco youth movement accelerates. The 49ers intentionally moved on from veterans like Deebo Samuel, Dre Greenlaw, and Charvarius Ward in the offseason, reshaping the roster with promising rookies. Among them are Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins, and linebacker Nick Martin, all expected to contribute immediately. Despite the turnover, Lynch remains confident in the team's core vision. Advertisement 'You're going to have to make some mistakes. That's no excuse. It's just a reality. I think we will have some young players playing, provided they earn those opportunities.' Lynch's message comes amid lofty 49ers Super Bowl aspirations. He maintains that championships are the only acceptable standard—a stance reinforced by two heartbreaking Super Bowl losses to the Chiefs in recent years. The team is relying on elite players like Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, and Nick Bosa to help guide this transitional phase. Coaching continuity is also a key component of the 49ers' 2025 strategy, highlighted by the return of defensive coordinator Robert Saleh. After serving in the same role from 2017 to 2020 before and spending three years as head coach 0f the New York Jets, Saleh is back in the Bay. His experience and leadership will be vital in accelerating the development of the 49ers' promising rookie class. Lynch's expectations for the 49ers are grounded in realism but driven by ambition. He acknowledges the likelihood of growing pains and early chemistry issues but remains confident that the team's blend of youth and veteran leadership can evolve into a legitimate title contender. Advertisement With what's projected to be the NFL's easiest strength of schedule and no opponents coming off a bye week, the 49ers are well-positioned to capitalize on a fresh start in 2025. Whether this young core can rise quickly enough to meet San Francisco's championship standard remains the defining challenge—and the ultimate test of the 49ers' bold new direction. Related: 3 San Francisco 49ers in danger of getting cut after 2025 minicamp Related: 49ers' George Kittle reveals what makes Kyle Shanahan different
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Binghamton Move Out Project donates 33,000 pounds of items
VESTAL, N.Y. (WIVT/WBGH) – Year-round residents in need are about to benefit from the unwanted goods left behind by departing Binghamton University students. The Binghamton Move Out Project collected over 33,000 pounds of items from BU students who graduated or went home for the summer. On Tuesday, nearly 50 local nonprofits were able to do some free shopping for things that might benefit their clients. Items included food, clothing, books, children's toys, and other contributions. Nick Martin, Associate Director of the Q Center on BU's campus, says the project relies upon more than 150 volunteers and the generosity of the students. 'I would hope, as a person that lives in the community, that this helps to show the community that students are ready to do a lot of great things for the community. They just need some extra support sometimes,' said Martin. The Move Out Project will hold another shopping day on Wednesday. Organizations interested in participating next year can fill out a form that can be found here. Former NY Congressman releases new book on America's past and future Public information meeting to be held for Brandywine Growth project 5 high school students receive McShorley scholarship Binghamton Move Out Project donates 33,000 pounds of items Binghamton Downtown Singers present 'Glory and Light' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
02-06-2025
- General
- New York Times
49ers rookie LB Nick Martin brings powerful personality to weakside spot
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Nick Martin and his three older brothers used to fight so much that their mother bought them boxing gloves to cushion the blows. Which, the San Francisco 49ers rookie recalled with a laugh, led to even more fighting in the form of neighborhood boxing tournaments. 'I lost a lot in the beginning because I was fighting people that were like five years older than me,' said Martin, who figures he was 7 when the bouts began. 'But I feel like that helped me grow in my mind, how to approach battles on and off the field. And then I started winning.' Advertisement That's been the story of his life. Growing up in Texarkana, Texas, Martin was never the biggest kid on the block. But he's always been a wicked hitter. That helps explain why the 49ers took the 5-foot-11, 221-pound linebacker with the 11th pick in the third round. One of the lessons from an awful 2024 season was how badly they missed Dre Greenlaw, their ferocious weakside linebacker who sat out all but 34 snaps due to an Achilles injury. When Greenlaw went to the Denver Broncos in free agency, the 49ers were compelled to find someone who could tackle, cover and set a furious tone like he did. The search led to Martin. 'You've heard of a sideline-to-sideline guy,' said former Oklahoma State linebacker Kenyatta Wright, who's now the program's financial director. 'Well, Nick is a football-field guy. Wherever you are on a football field, he's going to be there.' The other reason the 49ers fell for Martin is the small-bodied linebacker's big-time charisma. He likes art, music, has his own fashion line and taught himself to play the guitar. On his first full day with the 49ers last month, he had the confidence to walk around in oversized shark slippers in the locker room and in his media appearance. He has about 10 pairs of animal slippers, including wolves and puppies, and he's not afraid to let the dogs out. 'I'm pretty comfortable with who I am,' he said. 'And I've always worn 'em, so why change?' Nick 'Jaws' Martin — Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) May 8, 2025 The 49ers note he was a two-time team captain at Oklahoma State. After he injured his MCL ligament in the fifth game last season, coach Mike Gundy petitioned the Big 12 to allow Martin to travel with the team. That's how important he was to the locker room, meeting room and sideline, even when he wasn't playing. The 49ers hope he has the same effect on a rookie class that, especially on defense, is expected to log plenty of snaps this season. Advertisement 'It's important when we're considering how the rookies are going to mesh together,' the 49ers' top scout, Tariq Ahmad, explained regarding Martin. 'Who's going to be the leader of that group? Who's going to push guys to watch extra tape, to be on the field extra?' Martin's mother, Tosha, describes her youngest son as 'joyful.' He was always upbeat, always curious, always joking. Older brother Chauncey goes with 'goofy.' 'He'd come hang around my friends and he'd cut jokes,' Chauncey said. 'But they were jokes I'd already heard. That's my little brother, and I'd be like, 'Stop being annoying.' But to my friends, he was hilarious. And I'd say, 'Bro, don't laugh at him. Don't egg him on.'' Nick — or Nickolas, as his mother invariably calls him — is close to all his brothers. But his relationship with Chauncey, who is nearest in age, is special. They grew up sharing a bedroom and dreams about playing in the NFL. They'd play 'Madden' and assure each other their names would one day appear on the screen. In the living room, Chauncey would get on his knees and pretend he was Ray Lewis. Nick, in the role of Reggie Bush, would try to get past him. All the Martin boys played football. Chauncey and Nick loved football. 'We just had a bond,' Chauncey said. 'Even though we had two older brothers, we were close. We shared a room our whole life. It was me and him.' Being three years older, Chauncey was the first to find football glory. He was the running back on Pleasant Grove High's first-ever state champion team, which in East Texas is akin to landing on the moon or winning Olympic gold. Nick, speedy but scrawny and not ready for the varsity squad, came to be known as 'Chauncey's little brother.' 'He didn't like that,' Tosha said. 'It motivated him.' Every time he was dismissed as too small, he hit the weight room. Whenever he was obscured by Chauncey's shadow, he'd try to outrun it by getting faster. Advertisement He loved his brother, tried to be like his brother, but also wanted — no, needed — to make a name for himself. And by his junior season, he was playing linebacker and running back while leading Pleasant Grove to another state title. The only problem was that Chauncey wasn't around to see it. He and four other 19-year-olds were arrested for their roles in a robbery that occurred in January 2019 in Texarkana. Chauncey was kicked off the East Texas A&M football team and sentenced to nearly two and a half years in prison. He saw bits and pieces of Nick's freshman season at Oklahoma State from the day room of Barry B. Telford prison in nearby South Boston, Texas. 'I'd point to the TV and say, 'There you go — he's right there!'' Chauncey recalled. 'I think he was like No. 46 back then. I'd say, 'That's him right there on kickoff (coverage). He's the first one down there on kickoffs.' It would just give me like a smile, you know, on a Saturday to see my brother on TV playing ball.' Chauncey was released just as Nick was making his ascent at Oklahoma State. By his third season there, the days of being known as Chauncey's little brother were long gone. He was no longer a special teamer. He wasn't even always Nick. Teammates instead started calling him 'Missile' for the way he took down ball carriers. His 2023 season, which truly caught the 49ers' attention, included a Big 12-best 140 tackles, 16 stops behind the line of scrimmage and six sacks. 'I've never seen a guy who was carrying a football who didn't drop as soon as Nick tackled him,' said Oklahoma State's Wright, who played six NFL seasons. 'His ability to get guys down at the point of attack was unbelievable. His speed to the ball was amazing.' Wright noted that Martin regularly would come into his office to talk linebackers and that his favorite NFL player to dissect was Fred Warner. Martin had Warner's No. 54 jersey long before the 49ers drafted him. Advertisement Warner said last week that rookies are usually reticent about asking him questions — 'the whole 'too cool' thing,' he said. But Martin hasn't been shy. At all. 'He's come in and asked me every single question known to man,' Warner said. 'It's like, 'Fred, how are you doing this? What are you doing after practice? What are you doing after lifts?' And he's wanting to be part of those (activities). … He already has the mindset of wanting to learn.' As for older brother Chauncey, at one point, he was Nick's inspiration. Now it's the other way around. Chauncey said that when he was in high school, he got an offer from Harding University, a Division II Christian school in Arkansas. He turned it down. 'I didn't want to go because of the structure, and it was a private, Christian school,' he said. 'I was like, 'Man, I want to go to school to have fun.' And I ended up getting in trouble.' When he was released from prison, the offer from Harding was still on the table. This time, he grabbed it with gratitude. He played running back for the Bison for three seasons and recently graduated with a degree in business management. Now, as Nick learns the 49ers' defense from Warner, Chauncey is trying to catch on with a UFL team. He says his little brother inspired him to re-focus on their shared passion for football. 'I'm in a way better place,' he said. 'And Nick is some of the reason for that. Seeing my little brother accomplish all this stuff we used to talk about, it just makes me want to keep going.'
New York Times
08-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
49ers' Robert Saleh says he's looking 2 years ahead as he rebuilds defense
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Though the San Francisco 49ers' recent draft class has all sorts of similarities to players Robert Saleh coached previously in San Francisco, the team's defensive coordinator insists his eye is very much on the future. 'You know, you're always trying to stay two years ahead of the offense,' Saleh said Thursday during his first public comments since being hired in January. 'There's always trends with offenses, and you can get an idea of what they're trying to do and what they're trying to get done. You're just trying to pick up on those trends. I don't want to get into too much detail, but you're always trying to stay ahead of them.' Advertisement Saleh avoided specifics but said his scheme has evolved 'significantly' since 2017, his initial season with the 49ers, and even from 2019, the year the defense took a major shift with the hiring of defensive line coach Kris Kocurek and the implementation of the Wide 9 front. That year was considered the high-water mark for recent 49ers defenses. They finished first in pass defense, tallied 48 sacks — including 41 by their defensive linemen — and allowed fewer than 20 points per game. That unit seemed to be on the 49ers' collective mind during the recent draft. In the third round, they took a linebacker, Nick Martin, who reminded them of Dre Greenlaw, a 14-game starter, including the Super Bowl, during his rookie year in 2019. Later in the round, they snagged a pint-size but pugnacious nickel cornerback, Upton Stout, who seems like a carbon copy of former 49ers nickelback K'Waun Williams. Williams' best NFL season came in 2019, when he had career highs in interceptions (two) and forced fumbles (four). In the fourth round, they selected C.J. West, a defensive tackle who reminds them of one-time 49er D.J. Jones. Kocurek has been pining for Jones-like defenders over the past two seasons. Now he has two: Evan Anderson, whom Kocurek fought hard to land after last year's draft, and West. 'Extremely stout, sturdy, but also has the quickness and strength to play in the other team's backfield,' general manager John Lynch said of West. 'Makes a lot of splash plays in the other team's backfield.' In second-round pick Alfred Collins, the 49ers have length in the middle of their defensive line that they haven't had since Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner lined up next to each other. And in first-rounder Mykel Williams, the team has a bookend for defensive end Nick Bosa that it hasn't had since Dee Ford started having back issues midway through the 2019 season. Then there's Saleh himself. The 49ers seemed locked in on Saleh as their next defensive coordinator as soon as the season ended, and they waited nearly three weeks for him to look into head coaching opportunities before hiring him to a top-of-the-market contract. Saleh, who left the 49ers to become the New York Jets head coach in 2021, was asked Thursday whether he considered going to a different team, one with which he hadn't already built a reputation. He said no and gave two reasons. Advertisement The first was loyalty to Kyle Shanahan, Lynch and CEO Jed York, who made him a first-time coordinator in 2017. The talent-starved 49ers struggled that season and the next, and a chorus of fans began calling for his job. 'And it could have been very easy to move on from me,' he said. 'So I'm indebted to this organization, to those men, for the rest of my life.' Saleh also cited the collaboration between the 49ers' coaching and scouting staffs that he said doesn't exist with other franchises. 'Most buildings maybe spend a week in terms of communication between scouting department and coaching staff with regards to the draft,' he said. 'This organization will spend three to four weeks just grinding on tape — offense, defense, special teams and going deep into the seventh round (and) undrafted free-agent-type players. And I think that's why this organization has had so much success finding Day 3 picks that come to fruition. And even the undrafted free agents end up having success in this league.' Saleh met with the 49ers' top personnel officials as soon as he arrived in January to discuss how he has evolved since leaving to become the Jets' head coach. One difference may be the size of the defensive ends he sought when he first arrived in 2017 versus what he's looking for now. The Wide 9 requires big-bodied ends who can set an edge in the running game and plow through tight ends on pass plays, something that's reflected in the 6-foot-5, 267-pound Williams. The cornerbacks, meanwhile, seem to have gotten smaller. Early on in Saleh's first 49ers tenure, the team looked for tall, long cornerbacks like the Seattle Seahawks used — someone like former Seahawk Richard Sherman. More recently, the 49ers have found success with smaller, feisty players like Deommodore Lenoir and Renardo Green. Advertisement 'When (Saleh) came in, he sat down with us, and he kind of talked about how he's evolved and his time away from here, and he also heard from us how we've evolved and how we see players,' director of player personnel RJ Gillen said last month. 'And then we came together and took a consensus in terms of the plan and type of players and skill sets and fits moving forward.' The 49ers ended up taking defensive players with their first five picks, the first time the franchise has done so since 1981. Three of those picks — Ronnie Lott, Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson — were 16-game starters as rookies. Saleh made it clear the incoming rookies who arrived this week for minicamp have plenty of work before any can be declared starters, including understanding Saleh's 'all gas, no break' philosophy. But it's also clear that after an offseason roster purge, there are opportunities to be had. 'They've got OTAs, training camp — it's gonna be a crash course,' Saleh said. 'And if any of them are worthy, they'll be on the field Week 1.'
