They traded jabs online. They nearly fought after a playoff game. Now, they share the same locker room. That’s the twist for 49ers cornerbacks Deommodore Lenoir and Chase Lucas in 2025. What started as college trash talk on Twitter grew into a feud that followed them into the league and boiled over after last season’s NFC Championship, when San Francisco’s comeback win over Detroit ended with the two needing to be separated.

A few months later, the 49ers signed Lucas. Suddenly, the guy Lenoir had been jawing with in the tunnel was standing a couple of lockers down. Lenoir didn’t hide how he felt. Asked this week about the move, he admitted his first reaction wasn’t exactly positive.

 “I was like, ‘Why did we sign him? Why y’all do that? This is the dude I was beefing with in the NFC Championship,” Lenoir said of their initial locker room encounter, as 957 The Game reported on X. For weeks, they exchanged nothing but side eye, passing each other in drills without a word. It took a simple glove slap while jogging off the field to break the ice, and now the moment has become a team anecdote about how football rivalries can fuel camaraderie, not conflict.

Now, less than a month later, Deommodore Lenoir is gushing over Lucas’s preseason performance, fire emojis and all. And Lucas? He jokes that their old Twitter beef feels like a lifetime ago, calling it “even more funny that I got into it with my best friend, Deommodore Lenoir” after that NFC title game scuffle.

“Everybody’s seen that clip from the NFC Championship where we were in each other’s faces,” Lenoir admitted. “But when I finally got to know him, he turned out to be one of the chillest guys on the team. Our personalities just meshed. He’d come over to the house, we’d game, talk football, and I realized we actually think the same way. I started to see him as someone different, and from there, we just built a bond. Now we’re close, for real.”

That closeness is part of why Lenoir has become one of the loudest voices backing Lucas’s push for a roster spot. And Lucas isn’t just hanging around. Neither is Deommodore.

Deommodore accepts Robert Saleh’s challenge

The legal incident didn’t just test Deommodore Lenoir’s character. It also provided the foundation for one of the most important conversations of his career. During the August 12 episode of The Richard Sherman Podcast, Lenoir revealed how Saleh approached their first real football discussion. “Really, just being a CB1, he kind of wanted to pick my brain and figure out how I operate. And just talking to him, he’s seen the confidence in me,” Lenoir shared. That confidence led to Saleh’s now-famous challenge, which Lenoir met head-on: “I’m ready for any challenge — if it’s got to be 99 plays in man or 99 in zone, I’m ready for the challenge. And I’m willing to back up anything that I put out there.”

Beyond individual accountability, Deommodore Lenoir’s transformation has become a rallying point for the entire secondary. With Charvarius Ward’s departure to Indianapolis, he stepped into a veteran leadership role that extends far beyond his own play. “I love it—just to be a guy that the young guys look to for help or whenever they need somebody to talk to or a shoulder to lean on. I’m always there,” Lenoir explained. Moreover, championship defenses build on exactly this kind of maturity and presence.

As training camp progresses, Lenoir’s willingness to accept responsibility and Saleh’s public endorsement suggest this partnership could define San Francisco’s defensive resurgence. When a coordinator who “has all the answers” and “never seemed too much for him” calls you “our kind of guy for sure,” that’s more than praise.