The San Francisco 49ers suspended De’Vondre Campbell Sr. for the final three games of the 2024 season after the linebacker refused to enter Thursday’s 12-6 loss to the Los Angeles Rams.
General manager John Lynch said the suspension was for “conduct detrimental to the team.”
San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan said on Friday he did not anticipate Campbell returning to the team, but that he was “working through the semantics of exactly how we’ll deal with it.” Campbell, who signed a one-year, $5 million contract in the offseason, is a free agent after this season.
Campbell told the team he didn’t want to play and left the field in the third quarter of Thursday’s game. San Francisco had wanted him to replace Dre Greenlaw, who was dealing with knee and Achilles soreness in his first game since tearing his Achilles tendon in the Super Bowl. Campbell, who started 12 of the team’s first 13 games this season, is second on the 49ers with 79 tackles.
Campbell’s teammates expressed disappointment in him after the loss, which left the 49ers with less than a 1 percent chance of making the playoffs.
“He’s a professional, he’s been playing for a long time. If he didn’t want to play, he shouldn’t have dressed out,” cornerback Charvarius Ward said. “He could’ve told ’em that before the game. So I feel like that was some sucker s— that he did. Definitely hurt the team, ’cause Dee (Winters) went down and we needed a linebacker. And I think (Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles) was banged up too, so for him to do that, that’s some sucker stuff to me, in my opinion. He’s probably going to get cut soon.”
How does this impact the 49ers’ depth chart at LB?
Campbell’s departure will bump up young linebacker Dee Winters in the pecking order once he recovers from the neck injury that knocked him out of Thursday’s game. That changeover already had begun in a Week 14 win over the Chicago Bears and may have been the cause of Campbell’s irritation. Campbell started the Bears game, but Winters took over his spot during stretches in the second half. That also happened back in Week 3 against the Los Angeles Rams, drawing frustration from Campbell at the time, but Winters got hurt in that contest and Campbell retained his starting job.
Moving forward this season, the 49ers’ top two linebackers will be Fred Warner and Greenlaw, who may not be quite ready for a full complement of snaps, and Winters will fill in for him as needed. The 49ers also can promote a linebacker from the practice squad, Jalen Graham or DaShaun White, to take Campbell’s spot on the 53-man roster.
The bigger result of the Campbell incident may be one of attitude. His exit Thursday drew strong reactions from his soon-to-be ex-teammates, many of whom have played through injuries or, in the case of Ward, following a personal tragedy. With only three games left and a playoff berth unlikely, the 49ers said they would use the remainder of the season to find out who truly wanted to be on the team. Which is to say, while there was some resignation following Thursday’s loss to the Rams, Campbell’s exit also seemed to spark plenty of fight. — Matt Barrows, 49ers beat writer
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