Kyle Shanahan: The 49ers "Made a Mistake" Signing De'Vondre Campbell

Did the 49ers do their homework on De'Vondre Campbell before they signed him this offseason?
Nov 17, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan watches the action against the Seattle Seahawks in the fourth quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images
Nov 17, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan watches the action against the Seattle Seahawks in the fourth quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images / David Gonzales-Imagn Images
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Did the 49ers do their homework on De'Vondre Campbell before they signed him this offseason?

They recently suspended him without pay for the rest of the season because he refused to play in their 12-6 loss to the Rams last Thursday. This behavior should have come as no surprise. Just last season, Campbell posted on social media that he was done playing through injuries. Then the Packers released him.

So why did the 49ers sign Campbell in the first place?

“It was tough losing Dre Greenlaw," Shanahan explained on Wednesday. "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. 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.”

I have two questions:

1. If Campbell was the 49ers third option, why did they give him $5 million guaranteed? That's a lot of dough.

2. If Campbell obviously was a mistake, why did the 49ers insist on starting him over second-year linebacker all season until Thursday night?

The 49ers wasted so much time and money on a player who never should have been on the roster to begin with.

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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.