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Well folks, it's official: De'Vondre Campbell has been suspended by the San Francisco 49ers for the remainder of the 2024 NFL season.
That's right, the former Green Bay Packers linebacker, who opted not to play for the team when Dre Greenlaw exited the game with an injury in Week 15, will not play for or be paid by the 49ers for the remainder of the regular season, with his playoff availability, should San Francisco make it there, unlikely too.
But in his first media session of Week 16, head coach Kyle Shanahan took things a step further, letting fans, media, and pundits alike know that signing the linebacker was an outright mistake.
“Yeah, of course. Yeah, we look into all that. It was tough losing Dre. We knew we were going to have to need a starting-caliber linebacker. We had two guys that we thought we had committed that we lost in free agency, and then another guy got cut after that and became available,” Shanahan told reporters.
“I was with De'Vondre his rookie year in Atlanta so I knew what he was capable of. Not that I was real close or anything with the defensive guys being the offensive coordinator there and everything, but I know we liked him in that building, and a lot of guys who had coached him had been good. We obviously made a mistake, but it's not something that you don't look into. You look into everything and you weigh the risk and reward of stuff. You weigh the situations that you have and what decisions you can make in terms of the options. And by no means was it our first option, but at the time, with what went down, we thought it was our best option, and it didn't work out.”
Dang.
Now granted, the 49ers did get some good play out of Campbell when they needed him, but that all went out of the window when he decided not to sub in on Thursday Night Football. With his reputation now in shambles, it's worth wondering if Campbell will play in the NFL again or if that decision will effectively end his career on the spot.
The 49ers are all on the same page about Campbell's suspension
Later in his Wednesday media session, Shanahan touched on how the 49ers players felt about the Campbell situation. Well, as it turns out, Shanahan addressed the situation on Monday for about 30 seconds and noted that the team is all on the same page regarding the 49ers' future.
“I think they've acted awesome,” Shanahan told reporters. “I mean, how you'd expect the team talked about it for, we didn't see each other over the weekend, so I didn't talk about it a ton after the game, but I could hear from their comments how most of them felt and addressed it for about 30 seconds in the meeting on Monday, and it's pretty easy to move on.”
Welp, there you go, folks; while fans will continue to talk about Campbell's decision to quit on his team and how it effectively serves as a summation of the story of the season as a whole, at least the rest of the 49ers players are still on the same page, which is good, since they need to win out to have any chance to make it to the playoffs.
