NaVorro Bowman can’t quite wrap his head around the idea that entering the 2017 season, he’s not considered one of the best linebackers in the NFL.
The four-time first-team All-Pro detailed his feelings in an interview with Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle, saying that he feels disrespected, and that when he’s healthy, he’s the best LB in the league.
“A healthy Bowman is still the best linebacker in the NFL,” he told Branch. “What else has stopped me? A knee and an Achilles. What else? What else can you say about me?”
“To not be mentioned as one of the best since I entered the league makes me feel a certain way sometimes,” Bowman continued. “For the respect not to be presented and given, it just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Whether or not Bowman is in fact the best LB in the league when healthy is certainly debatable, but the idea that he’s not one of the best is far less so. Despite missing all of the 2014 season with a massive knee injury and playing only five games in 2016 before tearing his Achilles, Bowman ranks seventh overall in tackles (505) since entering the league in 2010. Bowman has also been selected to the All-Pro team or the Pro Bowl in every season in which he’s played more than five games.
In limited time last season, Bowman looked far more like the player he was before he tore both his ACL and MCL in the 2013 postseason, after looking like he’d lost a step in 2015. Though Bowman was initially skeptical of his place on the team entering 2017, both new GM John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan have been impressed with him since the beginning of training camp. The veteran will open the season as the team’s starting middle linebacker against the Panthers on Sunday.
Bowman, 29, said he hopes to remain with the 49ers until he retires.