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49ers to Suspend De'Vondre Campbell Without Pay for Rest of Season

This seems fair.

Grant Cohn

Sep 22, 2024; Inglewood, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker De'Vondre Campbell (59) fouls Los Angeles Rams tight end Tyler Higbee (89) in the fourth quarter at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
Sep 22, 2024; Inglewood, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers linebacker De'Vondre Campbell (59) fouls Los Angeles Rams tight end Tyler Higbee (89) in the fourth quarter at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
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This seems fair.

The 49ers have suspended linebacker De'Vondre Campbell without pay for the rest of the season citing conduct detrimental to the team, according to The NFL Network's Ian Rapoport. That means Campbell can't sign with another team for the final three games. Technically, he's still on the 49ers, but he'll never play another snap or earn another penny here.

Campbell refused to enter the game during the second half of Sunday's loss to the Rams. He had been a starter all season and was upset that he abruptly was benched for Dre Greenlaw, a franchise legend making a heroic return from an Achilles' tear.

Instead of quitting before the game, Campbell suited up and quit mid-game when the 49ers really needed him after Greenlaw and Dee Winters got injured. Campbell went out of his way to hurt the team as much as possible. And he did this probably because the 49ers cost him a chance to reach some of his playing-time incentives which would have paid him an additional $500,000.

By quitting the way he did and getting suspended for conduct detrimental to the team, Campbell cost himself $261,666. Plus the 49ers can recoup more than $100,000 from him in signing bonus money. Campbell made a big mistake, and his punishment is fitting.

Now, let's forget about him and his unremarkable career. He was a mere footnote to this terrible season anyway, not the reason it fell apart. The 49ers would have lost to the Rams even if he hadn't quit. They were a miss with or without him. Do not make him the scapegoat for all their issues. Their problems run deeper than one disgruntled linebacker.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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