Colin Kaepernick has struggled during the first four weeks of the season after spending the offseason working with Kurt Warner.

“I think the unfortunate thing for Kap is he’s continuing to try to learn how to play the quarterback position,” Warner, an NFL Network analyst, said Monday on NFL Total Access.

“Here’s an athlete that’s done some great things, not only before this but also in the NFL up to this point. But he’s still learning how to play within the pocket, still learning to get better with his technique, still trying to figure out what he’s seeing and making quicker decisions with the football.

“I know everybody wants to get down on him but give the kid a chance to grow into the position. I have no idea what his future is going to be but it’s a young man that’s never really had to play the position like they’re asking him to play it now and he’s trying to learn and he’s learning under the gun.”

When asked if Kaepernick is regressing, Warner spoke about what has been asked of him since his arrival in the NFL as a second-round pick in 2011.

“Early in his career he ran a lot of that zone read, they forced other teams to bring an extra guy in the box and they gave him a lot of man-to-man coverage on the outside,” Warner said. “As a quarterback, you love that because you drop back, you pick out your best matchup and you just throw it to the one-on-one guy. Now that they’re not running as much and they don’t want to subject him to those kind of hits, now he’s playing more dropback quarterback, teams are playing more zone against him and he’s having to make more decisions, see more on the fly and be able to anticipate and make some of those throws that he hasn’t really had to make in the past.

“I don’t know if it’s regression or it’s just a young man that’s trying to learn. As I always say, it’s hard to learn at the best level. It’s hard to learn against the best players in the world and that’s what we’re asking some of these spread quarterbacks to do once they move into the NFL.”