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The 49ers Sign De'Vondre Campbell

This news comes after the 49ers tried to sign linebacker Eric Kendricks to a one-year deal, but he backed out at the last minute and signed a two-year deal with the Cowboys.

Grant Cohn

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Finally, they found a replacement for Dre Greenlaw.

The 49ers just signed linebacker De'Vondre Campbell to a one-year deal, according to The NFL Network. This news comes after the 49ers tried to sign linebacker Eric Kendricks to a one-year deal, but he backed out at the last minute and signed a two-year deal with the Cowboys. So Campbell isn't exactly the 49ers' first-choice.

The 49ers are in the linebacker market because Greenlaw tore his Achilles in the Super Bowl and could miss some or all of next season. His understudy, Oren Burks, also is a free agent, and the 49ers probably won't re-sign him after watching him get torched by the Chiefs in the Super Bowl after Greenlaw went down.

Campbell should be an upgrade over Burks, which is something. And Campbell certainly used to be a terrific player as recently as 2021 when he was an All Pro. He also played for the Falcons in 2016 when Kyle Shanahan was their offensive coordinator, so there's familiarity.

But Campbell isn't a good player anymore -- there's a reason the 49ers preferred Kendricks. The past two seasons, Campbell has declined rapidly as injuries and age have caught up with him. Ideally, he would be a backup at this stage of his career, and one of the 49ers rookie linebackers from last season, Dee Winters or Jalen Graham, who outperform Campbell and fill in for Greenlaw until he's healthy. But there's no guarantee one of those young linebackers will step up. So the 49ers signed Campbell just in case.

What else were they supposed to do?

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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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